economy

A recent story in the Boston Globe addresses the persistent absence of women in fields such as science and engineering. The significant gender gap in these careers is often blamed on science and math classes in schools, apparent differences in aptitude, as well as potentially sexist companies. Although women make up nearly half of those participating in the paid labor market, they hold only a small proportion of careers requiring high-qualifications and receiving high earnings. Women make up only 20% of our country’s engineers, less than 30% of chemists, and only about 25% of those specializing in computing and mathematics.

The Globe reports:

“Over the past decade and more, scores of conferences, studies, and government hearings have been directed at understanding the gap. It has stayed in the media spotlight thanks in part to the high-profile misstep of then-Harvard president Larry Summers, whose loose comment at a Harvard conference on the topic in 2005 ultimately cost him his job.”

“Now two new studies by economists and social scientists have reached a perhaps startling conclusion: An important part of the explanation for the gender gap, they are finding, are the preferences of women themselves. When it comes to certain math- and science-related jobs, substantial numbers of women – highly qualified for the work – stay out of those careers because they would simply rather do something else.”

“One study of information-technology workers found that women’s own preferences are the single most important factor in that field’s dramatic gender imbalance. Another study followed 5,000 mathematically gifted students and found that qualified women are significantly more likely to avoid physics and the other ‘hard’ sciences in favor of work in medicine and biosciences.”

Read more.

The Wall Street Journal reports on a new series of studies about the trend towards young adults moving back home to live with their parents.

WSJ discusses findings highlighted by sociologist Katherine Newman…

“More upper- and middle-income parents, including many who felt pressed for time when their children were growing up, aren’t ready to be ‘finished with them’ by their 20s, says Katherine Newman, a Princeton University sociology professor and one of the project’s 20 researchers. Also, as more students attend college at older ages, parents are coming to regard the 20s as a time of self-discovery.”

And co-investigators…

“Researchers on the project set out to document economic factors driving the trend, but found it’s bigger than the financial causes usually blamed for it. To be sure, rising housing and commuting costs play a role, Dr. Yelowitz found. But neither those factors nor job-market changes fully explain the 25-year trend. The biggest increase in young adults living with parents came in the 1980s, when the labor market generally improved, he found. And rising real housing costs explain only about 15% of the drop in independent living among young adults, which started years before the sharpest run-up in housing.”

Full story.

Science Daily reports on a new study from Christine Whelan at the University of Iowa which suggests that men whose mothers earned a college degree and worked outside the home seem to have an effect on how they choose their wives.

Whelan’s study, which focuses on high-achieving men (defined as those who are in the top 10% of earnings for their age as well as those with a graduate degrees), are likely to marry a woman whose education mimics their mothers’. Of these high achieving men in the study, almost 80% of them whose mothers had college degrees married women with college degrees.

In addition, of those men whose mothers had graduate degrees, 62% of high-achieving men married other graduate degree holders, and 27% got hitched to women with college degrees.

Science Daily reports:

“‘Successful men in their 20s and 30s today are the sons of a pioneering generation of high-achieving career women. Their mothers serve as role models for how a woman can be nurturing and successful at the same time,’ said Whelan, a visiting assistant professor of sociology in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. ‘One man I interviewed put it like this: “If your mother is a success, you don’t have any ideas of success and family that exclude a woman from working.” This Mother’s Day, I think we should thank those moms for leading the way toward gender equality for a younger generation.'”

 A recent article from Alex Williams for the New York Times investigated the ways in which young employees in their 20s and 30s discuss their salaries. Williams claims that there is an “etiquette to sharing the information” when young professionals brag about their salaries.

The Times reports:

“For instance, most young people don’t tell their cubicle mates, according to a 2007 study for Money magazine by the sociologist Jeanne Fleming and the writer Leonard Schwarz. Still, young workers seem somewhat less likely to adhere to this convention than older ones. The study found that 90 percent of those over 35 who were surveyed agreed with the statement ‘you should never let your co-workers know how much you make,’ while 84 percent of subjects under 35 agreed.”

“But between friends almost anything is fair game. Beth Kobliner, the author of the best-selling ‘Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties,’ said she had noticed that many young people now ‘have no idea what their boomer parents earn, but know every intimate detail about their close friends’ salaries, 401(k)s and debt loads.’”

mcmansion.jpgThe National Post recently published the third of a four-part series on Daniel McGinn’s book House Lust, titled “The Sociology of the Mega-Home.” McGinn’s book examines the obsession we have with our homes, and draws upon scholarly research related to shared living space of all sizes. This article suggests that personal problems and isolation from other family members is a function of the activities and interactions in the home rather than the square footage of the house.

“When sociologists have examined house size and family life, they’ve usually focused on the other extreme: the extent to which living in cramped or overcrowded circumstances leads to problems. In fact, research suggests that it does. New York University sociologist Dalton Conley cites studies showing that people who live in homes where the number of rooms is fewer than the number of inhabitants suffer from increased irritability, withdrawal, weariness and poor physical and mental health. Conley’s own research goes even further, suggesting that children who grow up in an overcrowded home tend to suffer in educational attainment, perhaps because they don’t have sufficient space to study or because the crowded conditions affect their sleep.”

…but…

“Kathryn Anthony is an architecture professor at the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana. Anthony believes that while people may worry about a family in a 9,000-square-foot home losing touch with one another, it may be just as easy to lose touch in a 1,500-squarefoot home in which each family member plugs into his own iPod while tapping on a wire-less-equipped laptop. ‘These kind of electronic devices allow people to get into their own worlds and really divorce themselves, at least temporarily, from what’s going on,’ Anthony says. It’s no wonder that pediatricians advise parents to keep TVs and computers out of children’s bedrooms.”

Read more. 

49253383_44783d7ce9_m.jpgTalking about marriage? Call in the sociologists!

In a recent article from TheStreet.com, Lyneka Little reports on the conclusion that marriage can be a ‘double-edged sword,’ providing positive and negative benefits to each member of the couple. The effects have proven to be disproportionately favorable for married men, who make more than their single counterparts. Read more…

“‘Marriage works as a two-edge sword,’ says Stephen Sweet, an assistant professor of sociology at Ithaca College in New York. On the plus side, there is often much stability to gain from tying the knot.”

“‘Married people are better off than single people based on economic status, social status and happiness,’ Sweet says. ‘The economic gains of marriage can come from aligning yourself with another individual and increasing social capital.'”

 “…Other jobs where a ring could raise your profile? Judge, clergyman and police officer. A police officer may want to show a stable life and marriage can help that, says S. Alexander Takeuchi, a professor of sociology at the University of North Alabama.”

“And how about your productivity? ‘Once you get married, you’re going to spend more time with your spouse and family,’ and it may affect your job productivity, according to Takeuchi. For those in a creative career, Takeuchi says, ‘the amount of time that you can spend to think and visualize things, and use your imagination decreases.'”

12200621_740d218a53_m.jpgIn a new editorial from the Freakonomics bloggers at the New York Times asks, “Do Hamburgers Cause Crime?” A new paper from Jennifer Dillard of the Georgetown Law School investigates the effects of lengthy employment on the ‘kill floor’ of slaughterhouses to a dramatic increase in the risk of psychological problems, like post traumatic stress disorder. Dillard argues that from a legal standpoint, these workers should be compensated under O.S.H.A.

In their discussion of Dillard’s new work, the Freakonomics blog authors also highlight sociologist Amy Fitzgerald’s paper which concludes that communities with slaughterhouses experience a ‘spill-over’ effect from this type of work, resulting in much higher rates of violent crime than other communities with similar demographic characteristics.

The Chicago Sun-Times picked up on a recent study published by sociologist Sylvia Fuller in the American Sociological Review.

Sun-Times reporter Francine Knowles reports:

“Sociologist Sylvia Fuller looked at data on roughly 6,000 workers during their first years in the labor market. For workers who stayed put, in the first five years of a job, each year of tenure is associated with roughly 2.4 percent higher wages for men and 2.9 percent higher wages for women, according to the research. Fuller also found that high-mobility workers tend to spend more time unemployed, and a greater portion of their job changes are the result of layoffs, contributing to lower wages.”

With the recent Spitzer scandal, media outlets have been discussing the issue of prostitution more frequently than usual. NPR interviewed sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh on the new form of this underground economy that has moved off the streets.  Listen here.

Miller-McCune reports on University of Texas sociologist, Arthur Sakamoto’s new report on paying top dollar for the best service providers. Sakamoto cites the example of a top-rated prostate surgeon in the country having a potentially negligible difference from his colleague ranked 50th, while the difference in cost could be staggering. This, Sakamoto argues, is an example of how individuals seeking services will pay top dollar for a formally or informally ranked provider because of a lack of expertise on the part of the consumer.

“‘The top people in their fields are getting much higher salaries than they used to get,’ he said. ‘That’s most obvious among lawyers and doctors. But it also applies to the person who gave John Edwards his $200 haircut.’
Sakamoto believes that star-power phenomenon is one important reason economic inequality is growing within occupations — the subject of the just-published paper he co-wrote with ChangHwan Kim of the University of Minnesota. Usually, the term “wage inequality” brings to mind headlines about chief executive officers — unions like the AFL-CIO ruefully note that the average S&P 500 CEO averaged $15 million in total compensation in 2006. Sakamoto agrees the disparity between white-collar and blue-collar salaries is very much a reality, citing a 2002 study that reports the wage gap between high school graduates and college graduates increased 15 percent from 1979 to 1999.”