The spring real estate market is right around the corner, and the annual frenzy of home buying and selling will begin again. For many parents, the residential search means finding a house in a neighborhood and school district with desired characteristics. But new research shows that not all families have the luxury of taking these factors into account. 

To better understand how people choose a home, Hope Harvey, Kelley Fong, Kathryn Edin, and Stefanie DeLuca interviewed 156 parents with young children in metro areas in Ohio and Texas. They interviewed about two-thirds of the parents again one year later, and also accompanied about two dozen residents who moved between interviews on their search for a new home. 

Regardless of their financial resources, parents of all racial and ethnic backgrounds expressed similar desires for high-quality homes in safe neighborhoods with strong schools where they could live for many years. However, parents thought about the goals of their searches differently depending on their income level. Higher-income parents’ searches were geared toward finding “forever homes,” and these parents attempted to come as close as possible to achieving their long-term preferences. In contrast, nearly all of the lower-income parents in the study were seeking to rent rather than buy. Because circumstances like eviction often pushed them to relocate, these parents tended to look for a new rental unit that would meet their immediate needs. Thinking of these rented homes as “temporary stops,” lower-income parents deferred their plans to search for homes that better matched their preferences until they were ready to buy a home. 

Understanding why lower-income parents may be willing to settle for houses that don’t match their long-term preferences is key to reducing a number of social inequalities, like disparities in school and neighborhood quality across income groups. This study shows that parents who decide to relocate before they can afford to purchase a home often turn to rental units that are better than their previous residences, while falling far short of their ideals. As a result, solutions that provide families more time to evaluate their options–like giving evicted residents longer to move–could help lower-income families forced to move on a tight timeline. 

Wage inequality in the United States has been increasing for four decades, and there are documented wage gaps by education, race, and gender. But new research shows that as big as wage inequality is in the United States today, benefit inequality is worse. And these gaps especially affect low-income Americans. 

The United States is unusual in that retirement benefits, health care, and paid leave are tied to employment rather than provided by the federal government. Employer-based benefits such as pension plans and employer-based health care therefore are not simply “extras,” but instead are the core of how Americans access health and other well-being resources. 

Just as some jobs pay much higher wages than others, some jobs come with much more extensive benefit packages. To examine the pattern within these benefit packages, Tali Kristal, Yinon Cohen, and Edo Navot examined the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s Employer Costs for Employee Compensation microdata. These data include the hourly cost of benefits for a nationally representative sample of jobs. The jobs are linked to employers, allowing researchers to track employer practices over time in a variety of sectors.Just as some jobs pay much higher wages than others, some jobs come with much more extensive benefit packages.

Looking at the time period between 1982-2015, inequality in benefits grew more than twice as fast as inequality in wages. Benefit inequality is larger than wage inequality both between and within workplaces (meaning both when comparing line workers at two different companies and when comparing a janitor to a CEO). Benefit inequality is only slightly higher than wage inequality within workplaces — largely because both are so high and have grown so much since the 1980s. But between-workplace inequality was almost six times higher in total benefits than in wages, indicating that the measure of a good job is more about benefits than the weekly paycheck. 

Why has benefit inequality grown? The authors have two answers: the decline of unions and the increase in nonstandard employment practices. Fewer and weaker unions mean less employee pressure for employers to provide strong benefits. Unions are especially effective at advocating for more equality in benefits, so the loss of union power is felt more in benefits than in wages. In addition, changes to employment practices including classifying more workers as independent contractors, temporary, or part-time mean that fewer workers qualify for generous benefit packages. A key part of these authors’ analysis is that workplaces have more control over the setting of benefits than the setting of wages, making benefits an easier place to decrease total compensation. Why has benefit inequality grown? The authors have two answers: the decline of unions and the increase in nonstandard employment practices.

While wage inequality is mostly a story of the richest Americans separating themselves from the middle-class, benefit inequality is largely a story of low-income jobs getting worse. For instance, while large firms can more easily provide a good package of benefits to all of their workers, these firms have increasingly subcontracted janitorial, food service, and delivery work. 

Benefit inequality is increasingly visible and increasingly life-or-death. These statistics represent the lives of workers who lack paid leave and health care during a global pandemic, and this article is a crucial addition to our understanding of how inequality matters today. 

Both nature and nurture have always influenced who goes furthest in school. Recent advancements in genetics have found a way to modestly predict educational success through genes, and sociologists are engaging with that work to explore what social factors affect the expression of those genes. Because women’s access to higher education has historically been limited by social and structural barriers, genetic predictors of educational success may have been muted. Over the past century, women’s college access has increased, but has this also equalized the role played by genetics in predicting who attains a higher education? Tracing gendered effects of genetics over time can expose effects of gender discrimination in education.

Pamela Herd and her research team including Jeremy Freese, Kamil Sicinski, Benjamin W. Domingue, Kathleen Mullan Harris, Caiping Wei, and Robert M. Hauser decided to find out. Using data from three longitudinal surveys, they examined the educational attainment of participants born during different generations, including the Silent Generation (born 1931-1941); War Babies (born 1942-1947), Early Baby Boomers (born 1948-1953), Mid Baby Boomers (born 1954-1959); and Generation X (born 1976-1983). Each respondent provided a saliva sample which was analyzed for genetic intelligence indicators, or alleles associated with higher educational attainment. Respondents were then assigned a polygenic score — a big summary measure that has been shown in other studies to modestly predict educational success. The researchers used these scores to compare how much genes predicted educational attainment for the men and women born throughout the 20th century, and how this changed over time.The researchers compared how much genes predicted educational attainment for the men and women born throughout the 20th century, and how this changed over time.

They found that the role of genetics in shaping educational attainment is strongly patterned by gender. Among participants born in 1939-1940, they found that men’s polygenic score was more tightly linked to their schooling than women’s at every age. Genetic predispositions helped men graduate college, but even women with the same genetic predispositions were limited by societal factors. 

But in comparing the patterns of men and women born in different generations, they found that gender differences varied as social conditions changed. Among the older cohorts, men showed a stronger link than women. The researchers believe that this was because women’s participation in higher education was severely limited during the 1950s and 60s, and because many men who had the grades (and the genes) to go to college either opted to do so to avoid the draft or mandatory military service or took advantage of GI benefits afterward. During the 1950s, however, the pattern began to reverse. This was likely because women in the older cohorts entered middle age, they returned to school as their childrearing responsibilities lessened and educational opportunities became more widely available. At that point the relationship between genetic factors and attainment increased–that is, the women who were genetically predisposed to do well at school were more likely to return in later adulthood. Around that time, more young women also began taking advantage of increased opportunities for higher education.Examining the interplay between genes and the environment can help us understand how gender inequalities in educational outcomes have changed over time.

Among the youngest respondents, born in 1982 and for whom educational opportunity has been the most equal, genetics is no stronger a predictor of postsecondary educational attainment for men than for women. 

Examining the interplay between genes and the environment can help us understand how gender inequalities in educational outcomes have changed over time. It also reveals that finishing college is not automatically the result of individual traits, but instead shaped by the social environment.

Students graduating from college now are searching for jobs at the same time as 1 in 5 American adults have filed for unemployment in the past month. A growing number may have applied to service programs like the Peace Corps or Teach for America — 1-3 year programs that come with a small stipend or require fundraising and are dedicated to a specific mission. Scholars have hypothesized that these programs allow students to explore their identity during an extended transition to adulthood. But new research from Alanna Gillis finds that there are distinct class differences in why students choose service programs. 

Gillis interviewed 30 juniors and seniors at an elite public university who were considering service programs. She identified four different ways that students thought about their service opportunities. Some, for instance, saw service programs like Teach For America as pathways to employment, whereas others thought about service programs as a short-term, service-oriented experience before settling into a more stability-motivated long-term career. These ways of thinking corresponded with different social class backgrounds and orientations toward work values. But despite these differences, all of the students were using service programs to respond to constraints of the labor market.Students’ reasons for applying to service programs ranged from seeing participation as a step toward a service-oriented career to seeing it as a “backup plan” to ensure employment immediately after graduation.

Social class and financial situations were key to how students saw service programs. For instance, one set of students were intrinsically motivated to do a service program because of the identity and values that they had developed in college. They saw service programs as a step towards a service-oriented career that they couldn’t yet precisely define. These students came from more privileged backgrounds or had qualified for large enough scholarships that they had little student debt. In contrast, students who came from more marginalized backgrounds and had more immediate financial precarity were more likely to be “backup planners,” interested in applying for service programs largely to make sure they had some form of employment immediately after graduation, even though they would prefer a full-time job. 

Although these interviews took place in 2015-16, when economists saw the United States as mostly recovered from the 2008 recession, these students perceived difficulty in getting jobs. Whether service programs were a backup plan, an escape before taking a more constraining job, an explicit pathway into the labor market, or a short-term way to build human capital, service programs were a way to respond to challenges in the labor market. Given the horrific labor market during stay-at-home orders related to covid-19, it is likely that a lot of students are now backup planners. Considering that students in a good economy were looking to service programs to fill (and help jump) the gap between no job and a rewarding career, it is likely that service programs of all stripes will be more important than ever. 

Today, there is a higher volume of news options than ever before and heightened concerns about the proliferation of “fake news.” One could argue it is more important than ever to research content before relying on it. But consumers are more likely to rely on it first, then verify it, according to recent media studies research.

The team of Stephanie Edgerly, Rachel Mourão, Esther Thorson and Samuel Tham used an experimental design with 841 participants to study when audiences seek to verify the news. After showing respondents a Fox News or Washington Post headline, the experiment asked respondents to indicate if they were likely to check other major news outlets, ask friends/family members, use a search engine, check Facebook/Twitter, or consult some other source to see if the headline was supported. 

Respondents showed greater intent to verify content from a source they considered credible or a headline that they perceived to be congruent with their already-established beliefs. Or, stated in the opposite manner, if participants found a source had low credibility and questioned the veracity of the headline, they showed less intent to verify. This finding goes against the reasonable belief that people would verify a headline if they were uncertain. Instead, readers strove for further proof to information that is consistent with what they want the answer to be. Respondents showed greater intent to verify content from a source they considered credible or a headline that they perceived to be congruent with their already-established beliefs.

Validating the news takes extra time and energy on a reader’s part. A reader must take additional actions in response to information they encounter. Overall, the team found respondents were more motivated to engage in confirmatory validation. Why? To dominate debate. “The incentive to take on the extra work of verification is greater when people think they can use the information to win future arguments,” the authors say. Credible headlines that back up partisanship values provide strong evidence for arguments. Less credible headlines that are against partisanship values are useless in debates. And, let’s face it, in this time of extreme partisanship, people are eager for a verbal battle. 

In October there were four women out of twelve presidential candidates on the Democratic debate stage, and Joe Biden has committed to selecting a woman as his vice president. But women are still underrepresented in political and business leadership. Why does this continue to be the case, 100 years after female suffrage and 50 years after the women’s movement went mainstream? New experimental research finds that anticipating harsh consequences for failure may be one reason women do not say yes to leadership opportunities.

Susan Fisk and Jon Overton performed three studies to test how the belief that female leaders are punished more harshly than men affects women’s leadership ambitions. They first confirmed through a survey that both men and women believe female leaders will face harsher consequences for failure. They then tested whether “costly” failure would decrease leadership ambitions as compared to “benign” failure, using survey questions about whether the respondent would be willing to take on a hypothetical leadership opportunity at their job. In the “benign” circumstance the respondent’s supervisor had encouraged them to take the leadership opportunity and had expressed that the respondent could return to the original team if the initiative failed. In the “costly failure” circumstance the respondent had not received support from their supervisor and did not know what would happen if the initiative failed. 

Both men and women were less likely to say yes to the leadership position in the costly failure circumstance, but women’s leadership ambitions decreased an additional 20% over the men’s decrease. These results demonstrate that simply encouraging women to say yes to more opportunities misses why they might say no. Women in the workplace are aware that they may be judged more harshly and face more reputational or employment consequences if they fail. This study helps us understand the micro-level reasons behind the stalled gender revolution and how gender inequality can continue to exist within gender-neutral organizations.  

There’s a big audience for the Big Dance. Although the NCAA Tournament has been canceled due to COVID-19 in 2020, an average audience of 10.5 million people tuned in to each 2019 game of the NCAA Division I College Basketball Tournament. But between screaming at the television and obsessively checking their brackets, some fans might not have noticed the subtle ways that broadcast announcers talk differently about lighter and darker-skinned players on the court. 

According to colorism theory, darker skinned people are seen as more brutish and lighter skinned people are viewed as more intelligent. Curious how colorism operates within college sport coverage, Steven Foy and Rashawn Ray used video broadcasts of the NCAA Tournament (years 2000-2010) to analyze the types of comments made by broadcast announcers across player skin tone. Athletes’ skin tones were categorized on a scale of lighter to darker skin by Amazon Mechanical Turk respondents. The research team then coded announcer commentary into three different types of discourse: remarks about players’ physical performance (basketball skills like ball-handling ability, rebounding ability, etc), physicality (athleticism, size/height, jumping ability, etc), and mental ability (aggression, cleverness, coordination, etc). Colorism theory helps us understand how NCAA broadcast announcers talk differently about the physical performance, physicality, and mental ability of lighter and darker-skinned players.

Foy and Ray found that announcers do talk about lighter skinned players differently than darker skinned players. First, announcers are more likely to make comments about player performance, such as shooting ability, with lighter skin tones. Second, announcers are more likely to discuss the physical characteristics, such as athleticism, of players with darker skin tones. And third, announcers are more likely to remark on the mental characteristics, such as cleverness, of players with lighter skin tones. Foy and Ray ultimately argue that color is “not a proxy for race,” and that they are independent social constructs with different features. 

This research illustrates how sport is a racialized institution, and that stereotypes based on skin color affect how players are evaluated. Although a lighter and a darker skinned player may be equally good at basketball, a darker skinned player’s abilities are more likely to be attributed to his physical characteristics, whereas a lighter skinned player’s abilities are more likely to be attributed to his skills or intelligence. College basketball fans should keep screaming at the television–but they may want to be mindful of the language they use to cheer on their favorite player. 

The United States has seen substantial change in both public perceptions and legal treatment of same-sex relationships in recent years. Sociologists are interested in how many people have changed their sexual behavior in response to these shifts in social forces. According to a new study, younger people demonstrate more same-sex sexual behavior than older people, with a greater increase for women and black men. 

Emma Mischel, Paula England, Jessie Ford, and Monica L. Caudillo examined data from the General Social Survey, a nationally-representative survey, from 1988-2018. They analyzed whether respondents reported they had same-sex sexual partner since they were 18, as well as whether they reported they had a same-sex partner in the last year. Their main interest was in cohort change, or changes in behavior of people born in a given period. Cohorts involved in this study ranged from those born in 1920 to those born in 2000.A new study shows that younger people demonstrate more same-sex sexual behavior than older people, with a greater increase for women and black men.

The authors found significant increases in same-sex sexual activity for both men and women in more recent cohorts, but much greater increases for women. They estimate that the probability of a woman having sex with another woman in her life went from approximately 1 in 100 for women born between 1920-1945 to approximately 1 in 5 for women born between 1984 and 2000. The increase for women does not substantially vary across class or race, but it does for men, with lower-class and Black men showing steeper increases in having sex with both women and men. 

Social forces that discourage or punish same-sex behavior have lessened across the board, which may have led to more same-sex sexual behavior. The authors theorize that the lessening of sanctions for same-sex behavior is largely a result of the gender revolution, since same-sex behavior is seen as gender nonconforming. But because the gender revolution shifted the definitions of femininity more than the definition of masculinity, women are more able to deviate from gender norms. In short, heterosexism may have lightened but the change is uneven. 

The recent news and research on student loans identify graduate degrees as a major culprit of mounting debt. Although 75% of people with student loans borrowed for an undergraduate degree, over 40% of the $1 trillion of student debt is a result of borrowing for graduate school. In a new paper, Jaymes Pyne and Eric Grodsky present trends of graduate student borrowing, who borrows, and the graduate wage premium.  

Pyne and Grodsky look at 1996-2016 data from three nationally-representative datasets. They find that one trend is simply more people getting masters degrees — a result of what they call “a perfect storm” of changes to funding in higher education, a greater demand for higher credentials, and increased returns to graduate degrees. Masters students are also borrowing more to complete those degrees than past students. Across all degree types women, historically underserved students, and students of low socioeconomic background on average borrow more for graduate degrees than their counterparts. Graduate debt has especially risen among Black students.New research on student loans identify graduate school as a major contributor to rising debt, but some students are better positioned by their degrees to pay it off.

Scholars of mobility worry about the large debts for Black graduate students. Carrying lots of student loan debt may prevent individuals from accruing wealth and perpetuate generational inequality. But the graduate wage premium, or the amount that a person makes as compared to a similar person without a graduate degree, is greatest for Black students. In short, we will have to wait and see whether borrowing for a graduate degree will turn out to be worth it. 

Popular culture complains that parents have become too focused on making kids feel good about themselves and not focused enough on encouraging hard work and effort. However, in their new article, Nomaguchi and Milkie demonstrate that support for passing on the value of working hard to children has actually increased over the past forty years.

Nomaguchi and Milkie analyzed which traits adults ranked as most important for children to learn on the General Social Survey between 1986 and 2018. Survey respondents ranked five traits from most to least important: obedience, autonomy, diligence, compassion and likability. The authors wondered if rising economic uncertainty would increase emphasis on survival skills, like hard work, or whether “self-expression” values like thinking for oneself and helping others (autonomy and compassion) would remain popular, as they had between 1920 and 1980.Support for passing on the value of working hard to children has actually increased over the past forty years. 

They found that although thinking for oneself remains the most popular, adults increasingly emphasized passing on the value of hard work. Between 1986 and 2018, the number of adults who considered autonomy as the most important trait for children to learn declined by about 10% while support for hard work more than doubled.  Nomaguchi and Milkie also found that since 2010 Americans have ranked hard work either as important or more important to pass on to children than thinking for oneself. Importantly, they found that if changes to the population, such as the increased number of college graduates, had not occured support for hard work would have been greater. 

Nomaguchi and Milkie speculate that the increased preference for survival values instead of “self-expression” values reflects the greater sense of economic precarity in the United States. Other social scientists have documented how shifts in the labor market since the 1980s have left more people feeling economically insecure. 

Nomaguchi and Milkie’s finding demonstrates the importance of investigating parenting values, like which traits to pass on to children, to better understand people’s sense of the economy and culture they are living in. People’s increased focus on hard work, and not self-expression, may demonstrate that Americans are concerned about the economy they are living in and will pass onto their children.