A new article from the ‘Health’ section of Newsweek magazine explores how the gloom and doom of current economic news might have a real physical effect on us. The fear of losing one’s job is a daily concern for many Americans and the physical and mental health consequences are now being documented by social science research.

A psychologist weighs in…

Layoffs create a sense of hopelessness. Stress-related complaints such as insomnia and headaches tend to follow, lingering even after victims find new jobs, says University of Michigan psychologist Richard Price, who tracked more than 700 layoff victims for two years. Research based on 17 years of Pennsylvania unemployment records concluded that employees affected by a mass layoff at a plant were 15 percent more likely to die of any cause over the next two decades. Experts blame the cascade of misfortune that often ensues after a layoff, including the loss of health insurance.

The sociological perspective…

Your health can suffer simply from fear of losing your job, says Sarah Burgard, a sociologist at the University of Michigan. After crunching data from two large national surveys, she concluded that chronic job insecurity over a two-year period rivals the anxiety of a job loss or a major illness. Burgard adjusted her data for what psychologists call “neuroticism” and found that even people who aren’t typically worriers report worse health when they believe their jobs are in danger. Fears of poor job prospects may have similar consequences. 

Full story.

The Houston Chronicle reported today on the growing number of families (specifically in San Antonio) who are turning to food banks and other forms of public assistance under the strain of high food prices and a precarious economy. 

The alarming trend, exemplified in San Antonio…

The San Antonio Food Bank helped 315,869 families in the fiscal year that ended in June, an 85 percent increase from the previous year. The food bank gave away about 30 million pounds of food in the last fiscal year, only second to the 33 million pounds it gave away when thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees arrived here. “Even though we are not dealing with a natural disaster, we are dealing with a disaster nonetheless,” said Zuani Villarreal, the food bank’s director of development. The number of people on food stamps in Bexar County climbed from the previous year by 10,000 people in August, said Stephanie Goodman of the state’s Health and Human Services Department in Austin. Statewide, enrollment increased by 190,000 people.

A sociologist weighs in…

Johnnie Spraggins, a University of Texas at San Antonio sociology professor, said the economy is affecting everyone, but San Antonio has a large population of working poor.

“Basic things like bread and milk are rising, and people can’t do without them, so they turn to the food bank and food stamps,” he said.

Full story.

The Detroit Free Press reports today on a new study out of Michigan State University which suggests that men who have never been married are increasingly just as healthy as their married counterparts. Despite this narrowing gap, this new research suggests that marriage is still beneficial given their findings that widowers report themselves to be in poorer health than those who still had a living spouse — a gap that widened each year. 

MSU author Hui Liu, assistant professor of sociology, said Monday the study shows that policy promoting marriage for health may be outdated, as other forms of long-term commitment become more common. The study also suggests that widows and widowers need strong reinforcement and community support help to keep themselves mentally and physically healthy.

Liu provides an answer as to why, for widowers, the gap between their health and that of married man widened over 30 years…

“People live longer, and the marriage duration increases over time,” she said. It’s more stressful when that long-term companion dies.

Read the full story.

Tara Parker-Hope of the New York Times recently posted a piece on her blog discussing new sociological research that has identified a surprising new risk factor for bad behavior — college. 

Parker-Hope writes: 

Men who attend college are more likely to commit property crimes during their college years than their non-college-attending peers… Sociologists at Bowling Green State University in Ohio examined data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which tracks education, crime levels, substance abuse and socializing among adolescents and young adults. Beginning with 9,246 students who were seventh through twelfth graders in the 1994-1995 academic year, the survey followed the students again in 1996 and 2001. 

The researchers found that college-bound youth were less likely to be involved in criminal activity and substance use during adolescence than kids who weren’t headed for college. But college attendance appears to trigger some surprising changes. When male students enrolled in four-year universities, levels of drinking, property theft and unstructured socializing with friends increased and surpassed rates for their less-educated male peers.

But why?

The reason appears to be that kids who don’t go to college simply have to grow up more quickly. College enrollment allows for a lifestyle that essentially extends the adolescent period, said Patrick M. Seffrin, the study’s primary investigator and a graduate student and research assistant in the department of sociology and the Center for Family and Demographic Research at Bowling Green State University.

College delays entry into adult roles like marriage, parenting and full-time work. Instead, college students have lots of unstructured social time. Other studies have linked unstructured socializing or “hanging out” with higher levels of delinquency and risk taking.

“College attendance is commonly associated with self-improvement and upward mobility,” Mr. Seffrin said. “Yet this research suggests that college may actually encourage, rather than deter, social deviance and risk-taking.’’

USA Today reports that new Census data released this week suggest that 6.4 million opposite sex couples live together (as of 2007), up from less than one million thirty years ago. This means that cohabiting couples now make up nearly 10% of all opposite sex couples, including those who are married. 

In comparison, the Census bureau reported 5 million unmarried, opposite-sex households in 2006, but that figure was based on a question that many respondents found to be unclear. In the 2007 supplemental survey sample of 100,000 households, the Census questions asked more directly whether respondents had “a boyfriend/girlfriend or partner in the household” and found 1.1 million more couples.

The USA Today article included comments from two sociologists:

Pamela Smock,. a sociologist at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor who studies cohabitation, says the new data gets closer to the truth, but because it’s a point-in-time survey, it still misses the extent of cohabitation in today’s society.

“It’s a snapshot,” she says. “It’s not telling you how many people have ever cohabited, which is much more than that.” …

Sociologist Linda Waite of the University of Chicago, who has done extensive research into marriage and cohabitation, says living together in the USA isn’t very stable or long-term, compared to some Scandinavian countries where it’s more likely to be a long-term committed relationship.

But in the USA, she says, it’s become “part of the life course.” “It’s something people do that leads to somewhere,” she says. “If it doesn’t lead to marriage, it leads to splitsville.”

The full story.

The Economic Times reports on a new study from Riley Dunlap and Richard York published in the summer issue of The Sociological Quarterly. The study suggests that poor nations ARE conscious of the need to protect the environment “notwithstanding assumptions that they are too preoccupied to do so.” 

Riley E Dunlap of Oklahoma State University and Richard York of Oregon University compared results from four large cross-national surveys, each conducted in several dozen nations ranging with differing economic statuses. Results showed that citizens of poorer nations were equally if not more concerned about the environment compared to citizens in wealthier countries. The citizens of the poorer nations were supportive of efforts to solve environmental problems. The authors believe that previous studies failed to recognise that environmental problems are often a threat to material welfare and not just quality of life. 

The study’s authors assert: “Our results suggest that well-designed policies to promote sustainable development will have more appeal to citizens of poor nations than is often assumed.”

Today’s Washington Post featured an article about how Muslim women in France attempt to resist prevalent stereotypes by attempting to balance the traditions of their faith with the secular society in which they live. The Post article cites the example of a young woman in France who goes out to movies and dinner and dates men (although usually with a chaperone), but wears form-covering clothing and a headscarf, and remains dedicated to her pledge to abstain from sex until marriage.

“The large majority of Muslims tinker,” said Franck Fregosi, a sociologist who has written extensively on Islam in Europe. “The girls will try to go out with boys but hide it from their families. And most of them have a normal life. Some will have sexual relations before marriage. But they will still try to preserve appearances so their families won’t know.”

 

Young women, Fregosi said, also struggle to break free from the cultural traditions of their immigrant parents, including shunning arranged marriages.

“Their priority is to have a pious husband, not a cousin or another man chosen by the family,” he said. “And that is something new.”

 

And additional commentary from an anthropologist…

Religious anthropologist Dounia Bouzar sees two factors at work: a “return to belief” but also a “questioning of the Western model, of the woman who knows what she wants with her body. A lot of young girls are wondering whether that really means more liberty.”

Read the full story.

A posting from Judith Warner on the New York Times blog ‘Domestic Disturbances‘ titled, ‘The Other Home Equity Crisis,’ takes a look at how women are increasingly affected by job loss in times of economic downturn. As further evidence that the opt-out revolution is a myth, beyond Warner’s book, the article cites a report from Congress that was just recently released.

This week, Congress issued a report, titled “Equality in Job Loss: Women are Increasingly Vulnerable to Layoffs During Recessions,” that may — if read in its entirety — finally, officially and definitively sound a death knell for the story of the Opt-Out Revolution. The report, commissioned by Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, states categorically that mothers are not leaving the workforce to stay home with their kids. They’re being forced out.

Women — all women, mothers or not — were hit “especially hard” hard by the recession of 2001 and the recovery-that-never-really-was, the report states. “Unlike in the recessions of the early 1980s and 1990s, during the 2001 recession, the percent of jobs lost by women often exceeded that of men in the industries hardest hit by the downturn. The lackluster recovery of the 2000s made it difficult for women to regain their jobs — women’s employment rates never returned to their pre-recession peak.”

While prior recessions tended to spare women’s jobs relative to men’s, that trend has been reversed in the current downturn, thanks in part to women’s progress in entering formerly male industries and occupations, and in part to the fact that job sectors like service and retail, which still employ disproportionate numbers of women, have suffered disproportionate losses. And this — not a calling to motherhood — accounts for the fall, starting in 2000, of women’s labor force participation rates.

Read the full post. 

The San Francisco Chronicle recently published an article on how presumptive democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has raised the profile of mixed-race Americans. When the social scientists weigh in, they add a level of complexity to Tyche Hendricks’ report on the issue:

The debate over what to call Obama – and the growing recognition of mixed-race Americans – is also a reminder that there’s no such thing as racial purity and, indeed, that “biologically, race is a fiction,” said sociologist Jorge Chapa, the director of the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society at the University of Illinois.

Still, prejudices based on conceptions about race continue, said Michael Omi, a professor of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley. “The prospect of having an African American presidential candidate has led some people to think we’re now in a post-racial society,” Omi said. “What’s disturbing are the ways in which that ignores the persistence of racial inequalities – in health care, home-mortgage loan rates – it shouldn’t make us think we’ve gotten beyond that.”

But the expanding conversation about race that has been prompted by Obama’s candidacy and his complex heritage could advance America’s understanding about race. “I want the history of miscegenation to be part of our discussion, and I think Barack Obama could catapult us there,” said Vest, the iPride co-director. “If these (mixed race) kids are able to normalize their difference by looking at Obama, then my work is done.”

The Columbus Dispatch looks back to the 1968 olympics where a famous image of two men with raised fists left a legacy with important implications for the relationship between race and athletic competition. See image.

David Davis of the Columbus Dispatch writes: 

United they stood, two men with black-gloved fists thrust into the night. In solidarity, they bowed their heads as the national anthem played. Together, in harmonious synchronicity, they defied history. On Oct. 16, 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos finished first and third in the 200 meters at the Olympics. Smith set a world record with a time of 19.83 seconds, powering through the thin air of Mexico City and across the finish line, arms upraised, with a mark that endured for 11 years. But it was their demonstration on the victory podium afterward, medals dangling around their necks, that still resonates today. Their purpose was to draw attention to the plight of blacks at the height of the civil rights movement. As Smith told ABC announcer Howard Cosell, “My raised right hand stood for the power in black America. Carlos’ raised left hand stood for the unity of black America. Together they formed an arch of unity and power.”

Although the two athletes had a rocky relationship with one another, their symbolic gesture still holds an important place in olympic history… and is worthy of sociological commentary…

The backlash was immediate. The International Olympic Committee pressured the U.S. Olympic Committee to banish both. The Associated Press accused them of a “Nazi-like salute.” Brent Musberger, then a columnist with the Chicago American newspaper, called them “black-skinned storm-troopers.”

“It was a polarizing moment,” said University of Minnesota sociology professor Doug Hartmann, author of Race, Culture and the Revolt of the Black Athlete: The 1968 Olympic Protests and Their Aftermath, “because it was seen as an example of black power radicalism. Mainstream America hated what they did.”