This morning the Washington Post is running a story about a new study out of the Pew Charitable Trusts Economic Mobility Project, offering a more nuanced understanding of the forces affecting the income outcomes they documented in a project completed several years ago — “that nearly half of African American children born to middle-class parents in the 1950s and ’60s had fallen to a lower economic status as adults, a rate of downward mobility far higher than that for whites.”

But why? The answer is at least in part due to geographic location. The Pew Center’s new research suggests that “being raised in poor neighborhoods plays a major role in explaining why African American children from middle-income families are far more likely than white children to slip down the income ladder as adults.”

The new study:

This week, Pew will release findings of a study that helps explain that economic fragility, pointing to the fact that middle-class blacks are far more likely than whites to live in high-poverty neighborhoods, which has a negative effect on even the better-off children raised there. The impact of neighborhoods is greater than other factors in children’s backgrounds, Pew concludes.

Even as African Americans have made gains in wealth and income, the report found, black children and white children are often raised in starkly different environments. Two out of three black children born from 1985 through 2000 were raised in neighborhoods with at least a 20 percent poverty rate, compared with just 6 percent of white children, a disparity virtually unchanged from three decades prior.

Even middle-class black children have been more likely to grow up in poor neighborhoods: Half of black children born between 1955 and 1970 in families with incomes of $62,000 or higher in today’s dollars grew up in high-poverty neighborhoods. But virtually no white middle-income children grew up in poor areas.

Using a study that has tracked more than 5,000 families since 1968, the Pew research found that no other factor, including parents’ education, employment or marital status, was as important as neighborhood poverty in explaining why black children were so much more likely than whites to lose income as adults.

A sociologist authored this new report…

Patrick Sharkey, the New York University sociologist who wrote the report, said researchers still need to pinpoint which factors in neighborhoods matter most, such as schools, crime or peer groups. But overall, he said, the impact of the contrasting surroundings for black and white children was indisputable.

“What surprises me is how dramatic the racial differences are in terms of the environments in which children are raised,” he said. “There’s this perception that after the civil rights period, families have been more able to seek out any neighborhood they choose, and that . . . the racial gap in neighborhoods would whittle away over time, and that hasn’t happened.”

And other scholars offered feedback…

Ideally, said several scholars who read the report, investments in struggling neighborhoods would improve them to the extent that the middle-income families would not feel the need to leave.

“These findings do suggest that those with the means or resources should try to escape these neighborhoods,” said Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson. “But . . . the exodus of middle-class families from poor black neighborhoods increases the adverse effects of concentrated poverty.”

Read more.

As many of you have probably read in the newspapers this week, the case of Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s mistaken arrest has stirred debates about racial profiling in numerous media outlets as well as among academics. The New York Times summarizes: “Henry Louis Gates Jr., a prominent Harvard scholar of African-American history, was arrested at his home in Cambridge, Mass., last week by an officer investigating a report of a burglary in progress. Although charges for disorderly conduct were dropped, the incident has caused a stir over the issue of racial profiling.” (See the full story here.)

Although the some of the details of the case are still contested by the Cambridge police and Professor Gates, the events have generated some thoughtful sociological commentary on the course of events.

NYTimes blog ‘Room for Debate‘ hosted a discussion that featured commentary from scholars of law, psychology, criminology, criminal justice, and sociologist Peter Moskos, who noted:

As long as race matters in America, racial profiling will exist. But counter intuitively, police need to have more discretion, not less, to lessen profiling.

Police, at least in theory, are trained to avoid profiling. The same can’t be said for the public. If a citizen calls to report a suspicious person, police are suddenly forced into a situation that could very well stem from the ignorance or racism of some anonymous caller. And ignorance, which comes from all races, does not lend itself to effective community policing. Unfortunately, the age of the knowledgeable local foot officer is over.

There is a small segment of the population — street-corner young male high-school drop-out drug dealers come to mind — that should be profiled. Police attention will and should focus on high-crime corners. If these corners are black, well, reality often isn’t politically correct. In New York City, there are about 40 white and 330 black homicide victims per year.

Read more.

Earlier this week, a Crawler reader pointed me to a fantastic video interview with well-known sociologist Mary Pattillo as part of the Conversations from Penn State series from Penn State Public Broadcasting. The interview covers Pattillo’s path through academia, her two books on the black middle class, as well as what the Obama family means for the study of race and family.
See the video below, or link to the site here.

A few days ago the Washington Post ran a story about how University of Washington sociologist Pepper Schwartz tutored an elderly friend in the basics of online dating…

The Post reports:

A few weeks ago Pepper Schwartz, a sociologist who studies relationships at the University of Washington, spent the day giving a friend a crash course in online dating. Never mind that the friend in question is an 80-year-old woman — she wants “what every girl wants,” Schwartz says, “love, compatibility, someone to experience life with.”

And with a few clicks, Schwartz’s octogenarian pal joined the legions of seniors turning to their computers for a second (or third or fifth or 25th) shot at romance. By 2007, the over-50 set had become the fastest-growing group of subscribers for online dating companies, and double-digit growth has continued since, according to industry watchers.

But keep in mind that Schwartz actually works for one of these companies:

Schwartz, an adviser to online dating company Perfectmatch.com, cheers the trend. If a person in their 60s or 70s lost a spouse 20 years ago, “the chances of pairing again were small,” she says, because the avenues to meet new people were limited mostly to churches, senior centers and friends of friends.

Today single seniors can go online and “be opened up to literally thousands of options,” she says.

The story concludes with some of the potential risks for seniors using these services, but ends on an optimistic note.

…Schwartz says the desire for companionship doesn’t decrease with age: “Neither love, nor romance, nor adventure are the private property of the young.”

There are pitfalls, of course. Safety is always an issue with online dating, and so is disappointment. Just like their younger counterparts, seniors who log on to find love are also risking heartbreak. “The downside,” Schwartz says, “is when you meet someone you think is wonderful, but they don’t think you are. You’ve gotta be resilient.”

And about that 80-year-old friend of hers? She had a coffee date lined up by the end of her first day online

Read the full story.

This past weekend the Boston Globe ran a story about Obama’s new commitment to strengthening community colleges across the United States and drew upon expert commentary from Sara Goldrick-Rab of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The story:

FOR DECADES, American presidents lauded the working stiffs and immigrants who fill our community colleges, but then stiffed them during budget time. That ended this week when President Obama made one of his most welcome proposals of his first year, a $12 billion, 10-year plan to boost community colleges.

Obama called this a “historic step,’’ the biggest recognition of the importance of community colleges since the GI Bill and President Truman’s efforts that doubled the number of community colleges and increased their enrollment by seven times.

The sociologist’s reaction:

Yesterday MSNBC.com ran a story about marriage in the United States, and how some women’s fear of becoming an old maid is relatively unlikely. The story describes “a lot of fretting” women go through for fear of never being married, despite the fact that 86% of women tie the knot by age 40. But women do appear to be waiting longer to be wed, age 25 on average, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

MSNBC.com reports:

The vast majority of women who want to marry actually do, although they’re no longer in a rush to do it. Does that mean women and men are less interested in marriage than in the past?

No! Americans love marriage compared to people in other industrialized countries. While Americans get hitched at a rate of 7.5 per every 1,000 inhabitants in a given year, the French and Germans marry at a rate of 4.5 to 4.9 per 1,000, Swedes 4.0 to 4.4, Belgians 2.8 to 3.9.

But perceptions about marriage appear to be ever-changing, as a sociologist notes:

“I always tell my students that everything we study right now could be out of date in 10 years, that’s how rapidly the social environment is changing,” said Christine Whelan, a University of Iowa sociologist and author of “Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women.”

We may idolize the perfect marriage, but need to recognize that its purpose has been redefined.

The “institutional” marriages of the 19th century were practical affairs, meant to establish family bonds, distribute property and raise children as part of a unit within a community, Whelan explained. Then, from about World War I to the early 1960s, “people married for friendship, for a division of labor — what men did and what women did — and for love and attachment,” she said.

Read more.

The New Mexico Business Weekly ran a story about a new study from the National Association of Colleges and employers about new employment statistics for college graduates. The bottom line… sociology majors aren’t doing so hot.

The paper reports:

College graduates from the class of 2009 who have been able to find jobs are landing starting salaries comparable to those offered a year ago, a new report has found.

This year’s graduating class held its ground with average starting salary offers, demonstrating that employers are reluctant to significantly tinker with starting pay despite the recession, a report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found.

The average starting salary offer for new college graduates is $49,307, which is less than 1 percent lower than the average of $49,693 that 2008 graduates posted last year at this time, according to a news release Wednesday.

Although engineering majors seem to be doing quite well, liberal arts majors appear to fall slightly behind.

Liberal arts grads experienced a decline of less than 1 percent from $36,419 last year to $36,175, the study found.

Among the liberal arts disciplines, English majors posted a 1.1 percent increase in their average salary offer to $34,704. The salary offers for history majors rose 1.7 percent to $37,861. Psychology majors’ average salary offers grew 2.1 percent to $34,284. Sociology majors, on the other hand, saw their average offers fall 4.4 percent to $33,280.

Read more.

The New York Times ran an article yesterday about the ‘vocal minority’ of individuals who believe that man landing on the moon was all a hoax. All of this as many Americans celebrate the anniversary of that historic event…

The Times reports:

Forty years after men first touched the lifeless dirt of the Moon — and they did. Really. Honest. — polling consistently suggests that some 6 percent of Americans believe the landings were faked and could not have happened. The series of landings, one of the greatest gambles of the human race, was an elaborate hoax developed to raise national pride, many among them insist.

They examine photos from the missions for signs of studio fakery, and claim to be able to tell that the American flag was waving in what was supposed to be the vacuum of space. They overstate the health risks of traveling through the radiation belts that girdle our planet; they understate the technological prowess of the American space program; and they cry murder behind every death in the program, linking them to an overall conspiracy.

And while there is no credible evidence to support such views, and the sheer unlikelihood of being able to pull off such an immense plot and keep it secret for four decades staggers the imagination, the deniers continue to amass accusations to this day.

And what does a sociologist have to say about this?

Ted Goertzel, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University who has studied conspiracy theorists, said “there’s a similar kind of logic behind all of these groups, I think.” For the most part, he explained, “They don’t undertake to prove that their view is true” so much as to “find flaws in what the other side is saying.” And so, he said, argument is a matter of accumulation instead of persuasion. “They feel if they’ve got more facts than the other side, that proves they’re right.”

A law professor weighs in as well…

Mark Fenster, a professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law who has written extensively on conspiracy theories, said he sees similarities between people who argue that the Moon landings never happened and those who insist that the 9/11 attacks were planned by the government and that President Obama’s birth certificate is fake: at the core, he said, is a polarization so profound that people end up with an unshakable belief that those in power “simply can’t be trusted.”

The emergence of the Internet as a communications medium, he noted, makes it possible for once-scattered believers to find one another. “It allows the theory to continue to exist, to continue to be available — it’s not just some old dusty books on the half-price shelf.”

Read more.

This morning USA Today ran a story about new research soon to be published in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology debunking some popular myths about suicide.

USA Today reports:

Common beliefs about suicide being more likely on Mondays and during the winter aren’t really true, according to new research from the University of California, Riverside — summer is the most common season and Wednesday the most likely day. [The study is co-authored by sociology professor Augustine Kposowa.]

July and August are the most common months for suicide, followed by April and May, finds the analysis… The researchers found that 24.6% of suicides were on Wednesdays, with Thursdays the least likely day at just 11.1%.

Kposowa elaborates:

Kposowa says the common wisdom used to be that suicides were more likely on Mondays because the weekend had ended; however, he says Wednesday is right in the middle of the work week when stress is highest and the weekend is still farther away.

“Thursday is lowest because usually people are in better moods because the weekend is near,” he says.

He also says the folklore about more suicides in winter never really was true because much past research has shown that suicide was more likely in the spring.

Read more.

National Public Radio (NPR) ran an interesting story yesterday about the effects of the recession on young, low income families, drawing up the expertise of well-known sociologist Maria Kefalas.

The NPR blurb:

Financial and emotional stability can be an elusive fantasy for young, low-income families. Writer Laura Sessions Stepp, who wrote about “fragile families” in this week’s Washington Post Magazine , discusses how unemployment and financial troubles can shatter even the most loving young families. And sociology professor Maria Kefalas explains how family stability has become a class privilege in America.

Listen to the broadcast, here.