economy

The Des Moines Register recently discussed rural Iowans’ efforts to combat the problem of population loss as their young adults relocate to bigger cities, as well as the difficulties faced by those who stay close to home:

Iowans have made countless efforts to stop the state’s rural population drain. Former Gov. Tom Vilsack recruited former Iowans and welcomed immigrants. Groups worked to gussy up Main Street for a kind of nostalgic small-town tourism. Conference attendees listened to speakers who touted attracting a young, creative class of artists and entrepreneurs. Experts waited for the telecommuters who never came. Economic development officials hustled for small manufacturing plants that sometimes didn’t pay much.

The article includes sociological commentary on the fates of the “stayers”:

They are ignored, maybe even pitied when you see them in the grocery, and yet they are the very future of the town, say Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas, a husband-wife sociologist team who moved from Philadelphia to Iowa for several months to write “Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America.”

They identified a group of citizens they labeled “the stayers” who were not often encouraged by teachers or parents to attend college, worked through school to buy a pickup truck, and became invisible to the town’s more moneyed and educated classes.

“They are taken for granted, as in the story of the prodigal son,” said Kefalas, a St. Joseph’s University sociology professor who interviewed nearly 300 young people in a northeast Iowa town they chose to keep anonymous. “They don’t work as hard investing in them and just assume the old way of life will somehow work out for them.”

Part of the problem is that secondary education in America is focused on preparing kids to go to college:

“Those that have the ability go off. That makes a lot of sense as a community or a school. You don’t want to hold them back,” said high school counselor Diane Stegge. “But at the same time, you are taking them away from the community.”

Kefalas said schools should do more to prepare students who have a desire to stay or don’t have the money or abilities for college. Many are too busy catering to the high achievers.

“Teachers in Ellis (the pseudonym for the town in the book) were offended by our portrayal. But I’m a teacher, and it’s much more fun to teach those above grade level,” she said. “The challenge is how you make your school work for everyone.”

One rural Iowa school board member sums up the consequences for small towns of ignoring their average students:

“The ones with higher education, we know there is going to be nothing here for them,” he said. “We also try to focus on those with special needs. But the middle-of-the-road ones are going to become our community.”

Nr.187A recent piece in the New York Times challenges the conventional wisdom that bad economic times are a hotbed for criminal activity:

[New York] Police Department statistics show that the number of major crimes is continuing to fall this year in nearly every category, upending the common wisdom that hard times bring more crime.

“The idea that everyone has ingrained into them — that as the economy goes south, crime has to get worse — is wrong,” said David M. Kennedy, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It was never right to begin with.”

To make sense of this, let’s call in the sociologists….

Experts have long studied how shifts in crime might be attributed to economic indicators like consumer confidence, unemployment or a faltering housing market, particularly when it comes to property crime, burglary and robbery. The findings have been “rather equivocal,” said Steven F. Messner, a sociology professor at the State University of New York at Albany who has studied homicides in New York City.

While there is generally thought to be a lag between changing economic conditions and new crime patterns, he said, it is curious that there has been no pronounced jump in street crimes associated with the most recent recession, which took root last year.

“But it could take a while to work its way through the system and into people’s psychology,” he said. “I would say the jury is still out on the impact of this most recent economic collapse.”

Jesenia Pizarro, a criminologist at Michigan State, said that crime is indirectly related to the economy:

Most crime is committed by the poor and uneducated, she said, and a bad economy can aggravate poverty in ways that are not obvious.  “The bad economy leads to social processes that are then more directly related to crime,” she said, citing “less services for youth and young people who are less occupied and don’t have the guardianship they need” or cuts in education “that can lead to crime.”

You Shall Go To The Ball ...The San Jose Mercury News reports that unemployed husbands are picking up work around the house.

An estimated 2 million wives are now the sole breadwinners in families across America, since more men than women have been laid off in this recession, according to the Center for American Progress. Experts say that unemployed husbands probably are taking on more of the housework and child care duties — for now. But they don’t expect that temporary change to stick around if men find work again.

A sociologist weighs in on the trend:

“When men make more money, they can buy out of housework in a way women cannot,” says Constance Gager, a sociologist in the Department of Family and Child Studies at New Jersey’s Montclair State University.

Gager, who has studied the division of labor in families, says that while men have taken on more housework and child-rearing over the years, women typically still do two-thirds of it, including diaper-changing, bathing the kids, preparing meals and shuttling children to activities. Men tend to play with children or participate in athletic games.

However…

“I think the complicated question is: Do women want men to take over these burdens? It’s also the case that women feel a kind of propriety relationship to those tasks,” says Katherine Newman, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University.

New research indicates many employers foresee big problems on the horizon as baby boomers reach retirement age:

As millions of baby boomers prepare to retire, “the inevitable talent drain threatens to alter the national economy,” said Ithaca College sociologist Stephen Sweet, referring to a recent report he coauthored, released by the  Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College. “Cracks have appeared in the foundation of the economy and the workforce is getting older.”

In 2000, baby boomers represented the largest portion of the U.S. labor force at 48 percent. By 2010, they’re projected to shrink to 37 percent of the workforce, leading some economists to predict a shortage of 10-15 million workers in the coming decade, with a disproportionate number of inexperienced workers in the overall dwindling labor pool. The retirement boom affects staffing leadership and training as well as overall continuity and engagement within the workforce.

Those employers who see the change coming and are able to prepare may find the shift gives them an advantage over competitors:

Though long-predicted, the threat of workforce shortages has met with limited planning response from organizations. Realizing that some older workers want to work longer but more on their own terms to fit their changing lifestyles, some organizations created programs to improve employee engagement and productivity, and have a measured way to manage knowledge transfer. Those who heeded the warning and began adapting have a huge potential for a competitive edge.  “Workforce planning makes good business sense,” said Sweet. “Changing age demographics don’t have to disrupt a business — they may present new opportunities or competitive advantages. Employers should take advantage of programs designed to meet the evolving needs of employees nearing retirement, while at the same time meeting business needs by keeping experienced talent longer and ensuring business continuity.”

Read more about the research and additional findings.

The Boston Globe explores the economic effects of religion, and reports:

A pair of Harvard researchers recently examined 40 years of data from dozens of countries, trying to sort out the economic impact of religious beliefs or practices. They found that religion has a measurable effect on developing economies – and the most powerful influence relates to how strongly people believe in hell.

That hell could matter to economic growth might seem surprising, since you can’t prove it exists, let alone quantify it. It stands as one of the more intriguing findings in a growing body of recent research exploring how religion might influence the wealth and prosperity of societies. In recent years, Italian economists have presented findings that religion can boost GDP by increasing trust within a society; researchers in the United States showed that religion reduces corruption and increases respect for law in ways that boost overall economic growth. A number of researchers have documented how merchants used religious backgrounds to establish one another’s reliability.

The researchers, Robert Barro and Rachel McCleary, find intriguing relationships:

Their results show a strong correlation between economic growth and certain shifts in beliefs, though only in developing countries. Most strikingly, if belief in hell jumps up sharply while actual church attendance stays flat, it correlates with economic growth. Belief in heaven also has a similar effect, though less pronounced. Mere belief in God has no effect one way or the other. Meanwhile, if church attendance actually rises, it slows growth in developing economies.

Other social scientists’ findings have been consistent with Barro and McCleary’s results, reviving classic Weber-esque questions about how religion affects economies:

On one level, the connection seems intuitive: All the major religions extol virtues like self-discipline, sacrifice, and thrift. Some even preach that earthly success translates to good things in the afterlife, a kind of gold-plated stairway to heaven. Religion can, quite directly, affect what you earn – fundamentalists and evangelicals in the United States tend to have lower savings rates and incomes than members of other religions, in part because they have larger families and give away more of their money.

Some find religion prompts specific behaviors that spark economic growth:

Charles M. North, an economist at Baylor University, argues that private property protections developed by the Church to guard against grasping secular rulers gave Catholic – and eventually Protestant – nations stronger protections for individual rights than other nations, creating incentive for individual success. Similarly, literacy seems clearly connected with economic development, and mass literacy is a Protestant invention, says Robert D. Woodberry, a sociologist at University of Texas at Austin. He has mapped how missionaries spread literacy, technology, and civic institutions, and finds that those correlate strongly with economic growth. He argues in part that this helps explain why the once-poor but largely Protestant United States surpassed rich, Catholic Mexico after 1800.

The bottom line:

The work is preliminary, but offers the hope of useful findings. Knowing exactly how and when God influences mammon could lead to smarter forms of economic development in emerging nations, and could add to our understanding of how culture shapes wealth and poverty. And it stands as part of a larger movement in economics, in which the field is looking beyond purely material explanations to a broader engagement with human culture, psychology, and even our angels and demons.

Not Hiring SignThe Wall Street Journal reports this week that requests to expunge criminal records are on the rise in this tough economy.

In Michigan, state police estimate they’ll set aside 46% more convictions this year than last. Oregon is on track to set aside 33% more. Florida sealed and expunged nearly 15,000 criminal records in the fiscal year ended June 30, up 43% from the previous year. The courts of Cook County, which includes Chicago and nearby suburbs, received about 7,600 expungement requests in the year’s first three quarters, nearly double the pace from the year before.

The criminological commentary…

The increase comes as unemployment has risen above 10%, allowing potential employers to be choosier than they have been in decades. More Americans have criminal records now, criminologists say, in part because a generation has come of age since the start of the war on drugs.

And…

In 1967, 50% of American men had been arrested. Since then, arrests made in connection with domestic violence and illegal drugs have pushed the number to 60%, estimates Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University. The annual number of arrests for possession of marijuana more than tripled to 1.8 million from 1980 to 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

But is expungement a cure-all for those with a record? Maybe not, given ease of access to such information via the Internet for would-be employers:

Expungement doesn’t wipe away all traces. Local news Web sites routinely post arrest mug shots, which are nearly impossible to eradicate from the Internet. Search engines can turn up a smattering of decades-old news and police reports, plus caches of newer ones. Arrests that have been legally expunged may remain on databases that data-harvesting companies offer to prospective employers; such background companies are under no legal obligation to erase them.

Twenty Dollar Bill
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that sociological research has motivated Los Angeles city Councilman  Richard Alarcón to take action to make nonpayment of wages illegal.

The issue:

“People think that just because they pick up somebody on the street or at a day laborer center that they don’t have the responsibility to pay them if they don’t like the work,” Alarcón said. “This would make it illegal for somebody to do that.”

Los Angeles would join a handful of cities, including Denver and Austin, Texas, that hold employers criminally responsible for not paying their employees. State and federal laws govern overtime, minimum wage and other labor standards, but the penalties typically are civil. A local ordinance would enable city prosecutors to file misdemeanor charges against employers.

The research:

Alarcón said he was motivated by a recent study that showed many low-wage workers in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago often don’t receive minimum wage or overtime pay. The study, based on interviews with more than 4,300 workers, found that 26 percent of workers weren’t paid minimum wage the week before and that 76 percent of those who worked overtime the previous week weren’t paid the proper overtime rate. According to the report, the violations were widespread and occurred in various industries, including construction, child care and apparel.

“We were shocked ourselves,” said Ruth Milkman, a University of California, Los Angeles sociology professor and one of the authors of the study.

Milkman said employers need to know the laws – and that there are consequences for not following them. “If criminal penalties are what is needed, there is no reason not to try that.”

Autumn HouseThe recently released 2008 American Community Survey (from the U.S. Census Bureau) finds about 4 million “multigenerational” American households, reports the Houston Chronicle. This trend seems to be enjoying renewed popularity, sociologists note:

While the number of multigenerational households has remained steady since the 2000 Census, sociologists and demographers say they expect to see an increase. Immigration and out-of-wedlock childbearing generally spur high rates of multigenerational households in certain geographical areas, and they will continue to be factors, experts said.

What’s pushing the trend now is the recession and baby boomers. With layoffs and furloughs, people are moving back in with their parents or other family members to save money. Also, many baby boomers are taking care of their elderly parents as the cost of long-term care soars. Baby boomers themselves are growing old, too. Their children will be preparing to take care of them, experts said.

“People are going back to living the way they did in the beginning of the 20th century,” said Ray Eve, head of the sociology department at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Eve said economics was a driving factor then, just like it is now.

This illustrates how the idea of “family” shifts over time:

Society has had a long fascination with the idea of the traditional family — father, mother and children — but the reality is it has never really existed, said Holly Heard, a sociology professor at Rice University.

People often have lived with extended family members, and they do more so now than 20 years ago, Heard said.

For the early part of the 20th century to the 1950s, multigenerational households were fairly common. After World War II, people became more affluent, and family members moved out because they could afford to live on their own. A shift began to occur in the 1980s, when the recession hit, sociologists said.

Despite the day-to-day challenges that may come with three or more generations sharing one home, sociologists note benefits, as well:

Studies show some physical and psychological benefits for multiple generations living together, sociologists said.

People who live with relatives tend to have better health and are less suicidal. Children are also less likely to be delinquent because they have additional family members to nurture and take care of them, they said.

Explore more housing data from the American Community Survey.

Filthy LucreOn PBS’ NewsHour, business correspondent Paul Solman sat down with sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh to talk about how even though the economy is inching toward ‘recovery’ the perils of jobless and job-seeking Americans suggest a need for new metrics to evaluate economic recovery.

Solman reports:

According to Venkatesh, the days of a company giving someone a job for 10 years may be over; many American companies don’t know where they themselves will be in six months to a year. Instead, as companies hire more people for shorter periods of time, on a contract or freelance basis, we’ll need better ways to evaluate how this type of employment fits within our models of economic recovery.

Read more.

Watch the video.

Tomato soup & melted cheese sammichYesterday The Guardian (UK) ran a story about a new trend documented by sociologists at Oxford University. The Guardian reports:

More families are eating together at home as a result of the recession, a report by Oxford academics has found.

A quarter of parents questioned say they are trying harder to ensure that everyone in the household eats the same meal to help keep costs down, while 48% of parents say they are eating out less frequently. One in six cited more family time as a side effect of the downturn.

Changing Plates, based on research by the department of sociology at Oxford University and YouGov, and commissioned by Birds Eye, found that 67% of UK adults eat a meal with their families at least three times a week. Almost half do so every day.

The study’s author notes,

Jonathan Gershuny, from the Department of Sociology at Oxford University, said: “The findings of this report suggest that while the family meal is adapting and becoming more relaxed, the social significance of eating together remain.”

Read more.