Each year the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) calculates the fair market rents for apartments throughout the U.S. in order to set standards for housing assistance payments and vouchers for Section 8. Using data from the Census and the American Community Surveys, HUD figures out the average cost for various sizes of apartments. You can easily look up data for fiscal year 2012 here.
The generally-accepted standard for affordable, sustainable housing costs is that they should be about a third of a household’s income. The National Low Income Housing Coalition recently released a report on the mismatch between minimum wage — currently set at $7.25 nationally, with some states and municipalities having higher minimum wages within their boundaries — and the standard of living. The NLIHC report included this map showing the hourly wage that would be required for the HUD-calculated fair market rent to be about 30% of a full-time worker’s income:
In no state does the minimum wage pay enough to hit the 30%-of-income standard of affordable housing costs. How many hours would a minimum-wage worker need to work per week to make enough that the fair market rent would be about a third of their income? A lot, from a low of 63 hours a week in West Virginia to a high of 175 in Hawaii:
Economic recoveries often depend on the state of the housing market. While an April increase in housing prices has led many analysts to talk of a housing recovery, U.S. home values still remain depressed. According to a Zillow real estate research report, they are still some 25% below their 2007 peak.
Perhaps the most telling indicator of the state of the housing market is that, as of the first quarter 2012, 31% of all owner-occupied homeowners with a mortgage were “underwater,” which means they had a mortgage greater than the market value of their home. As the table below shows, these homeowners owed, on average, $75,644 more than what their home was worth.
To this point, the high percentage of underwater homeowners represents, in the words of Zillow, only “a potential danger.” That is because “the majority of underwater homeowners continue to make regular payments on their mortgage, with only 10% percent of the 31% nationwide being delinquent.” The following figure highlights the percent of delinquent/underwater homeowners in the largest metropolitan areas.
At the same time, as Zillow notes:
With nearly a third of the nation’s mortgaged homeowners in negative equity and the average underwater homeowner having a home value that is 31 percent lower than their mortgage balance, negative equity will prove both to be difficult to fully eradicate near-term and to have pernicious effects longer term as some households continue to encounter short-term financial trouble even with a slowly improving broader economy. Should economic growth slow, more homeowners will not be able to make timely mortgage payments, thereby increasing delinquency rates and eventually foreclosures.
In other words, if the economy slows, or interest rates rise, two very likely possibilities, the housing market could deteriorate quickly, intensifying economic problems. In short, we are a long way from recovery.
NPR’s Planet Money asks an interesting question. If there are more women in the workforce now than there were forty years ago (and there are), where did all the additional jobs come from?
The pie charts below tell some of the story. On the left are charts representing the percentage of women in various occupations in 1972. The size of the circle corresponds to the size of the sector: larger is equivalent to more total jobs; on the right are the same charts for 2012.
Notice two trends: first, in almost all categories today women are a larger percentage of the workers than they were in 1972 and, second, many of the occupational sectors that have high percentages of women have grown (e.g., education and health), whereas many in which men dominate have shrunk (e.g., manufacturing, media/telecommunications).
So, as women have joined the workforce, they’ve contributed to the overall growth of the American workforce and, specifically, filled the demand for employees in growing occupations.
The prisoner’s dilemma is a concept used to help explain situations in which individual actors may pursue their own self-interest even in situations where they would all be better off if they cooperated and acted for the good of the group. In this short video posted at Scientific American, Michael Moyer explains the prisoner’s dilemma puzzle and how it helps explain situations such as the global nuclear arms race:
The University of Cinncinati’s J.A. Carter has put together a fabulous resource: a Course Guide for Sociology of Sport classes.
Gwen has put together a new Pinterest page. This is our 16th and it covers various attempts by marketers to Masculinize Femininized Products in order to sell them to men.
An article tracing the history and philosophy of SocImages is now in pre-publication. Feel free to email socimages@thesocietypages.org for a copy if you’d like one.
If your campus is like mine, the syllabi and/or student handbook contain a statement along the lines of “For every hour of course instruction, students should expect to spend 2 to 3 hours per week in study and preparation outside of class.” So for a 3-credit course, that would be 6 to 9 hours per week spent on the class — doing the reading, studying the material, and completing assignments. And if you’re like me, you periodically bemoan the fact that this message does not seem to have reached its target audience.
So how much are students studying? Well, not as much as we tell them they’re supposed to, it appears. Peter N. sent in an image from the Washington Post, summarizing the number of hours students from a range of majors report studying per week. At 23.7 hours per week, architecture students are studying enough to almost meet the study expectations for 4 classes a week, at the lower end of the standard 6-9 hours/week range. Speech students averaged 10.8 hours a week — less than the minimum for two courses:
The data is based on self-reports from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). Critics express concerns with self-reports of studying; students may not have an accurate sense of how much time they spend preparing for class each week, especially as requirements fluctuate throughout the semester. NSSE, of course, defends their data. And the effects of self-reports seem unclear; would they lead to overestimates or underestimates?
Just before Mother’s Day, TIME grabbed America’s attention with a cover image accompanying the headline “Are You Mom Enough?” Its photo featured 26-year-old Jamie Lynne Grumet nursing her 3-year-old son.* The image electrified the blogosphere. With 24 hours there were over 18,000 comments on one site alone. LA Weekly called her a MILF and reported that internet traffic flooding her website caused it to crash.
The responses, though, were mostly negative. In a TODAY.com poll about the image, more than 131,000 people weighed in; 73% saying they would have preferred not to see the image. Saturday Night Live wasted no time in skewering both mother and child. Purportedly, some newsstands covered up the image and when it appeared on some news shows, Grumet’s breast was blurred.
For those for whom the image was offensive, Grumet’s physical attractiveness and her exposed body conflate feeding with sexiness, hence constructing the image of her suckling son with creepy or incestuous undertones — exactly the kind of one-note misconstrual of the breast (for sexual appeal rather than nutrition) that breastfeeding advocates revile. Objections to the image included revulsion that a child — clearly still not a baby — would be connected to his mother’s body this intimately, alongside a fair share who claimed he would surely later be scarred — if not by the experience of cognitively remembering breastfeeding, then by this image circulating through his future school yards. One commentator claimed deep concern that Grumet’s son may “never be better-known for anything than for being a breastfeeding 3-year-old on the cover of a national magazine,” and that the image was one of “psychological abuse,” as well as “an act of media violence against a child” perpetuated by manipulative journalists.
Breastfeeding advocates (so-called “lactivists”) seemed torn. On the one hand, the image drew attention to their cause: the benefits of long-term breastfeeding, including both nutritional benefits and mother/child bonding. On the other hand, it was clear this was being done for shock value and exploitative purposes. Grumet’s hand-on-hip, defiant stance and her son’s stepladder perch hardly convey the sense of intimacy that breastfeeding can offer. Most agreed that TIME‘s choice of a 26-year old, blonde, white woman who looks like a model was a deliberate move meant to provoke. In a “Behind the Cover” online sidebar photographer Martin Schoeller admits that he posed Grumet and her child upright in order to “underline that this was an uncommon situation” (i.e., to be provocative). The story accompanying the article doesn’t mention Grumet at all; instead, it profiles 72-year-old Dr. William Sears, the “father” of the attachment parenting movement. All this exacerbated the sense that the sensationalistic pose of Grumet’s lithe body and her son’s latch was generated just to move copies of the magazine.
By capitalizing on shock value and American squeamishness about breastfeeding, there is no doubt the image will continue to generate reaction for a while longer. And it likely sold magazines. It inspired a few “print is not dead” articles, with one writer calling the cover “a shocking stroke of genius” that serves as a testament that a powerful image can still generate buzz and boost magazine sales.
Unfortunately the image may ultimately harm the cause it represents. The relationship between media and activists is a fraught one. Activists need media attention, but far too often media attention can warp and undermine activist projects. It remains to be seen whether the cover will be a net good or bad for lactivists.
*A few people wondered about why TIME didn’t feature Grumet’s older, adopted child, who she also breastfeeds. One guess is that bold as the cover image is, even TIME‘s editors were afraid to take on the implications of a white woman nursing a black child.
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Elline Lipkin, PhD, is a Research Scholar with UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women. She is the author of Girls’ Studies and The Errant Thread, recipient of the Kore Press First Book Award for Poetry. She lives in Los Angeles and has written for the Ms. magazine blog, Salon.com and Girl w/Pen, as well as other contemporary publications. She tweets at @girlsstudies.
This is the second of two posts about cruel practices in horse industries. The first was about horse racing.
Yesterday we covered the abuse of horses in horse racing; in this post we discuss a recent video released by the Humane Society. The video highlights an instance of a larger issue, which is how arbitrary human tastes can create incentives for cruelty.
The concern revolves around the Tennessee Walking Horse (TWH), a breed developed in the U.S. in the late 1800s and bred to have smooth gaits, including their distinctive “running walk,” that are unusual in most breeds. Over time, a more exaggerated version became popular among show judges and spectators at TWH shows; called the “big lick,” it requires horses to shift their weight to their back legs and pick their front legs high off the ground. Fans enjoyed the flashy, unusual movements and horses that performed the gait began taking home more prizes. This created a powerful incentive to get horses to exhibit the unnaturally exaggerated gait.
How do you get this gait? It’s possible to get some horses to do so through careful training. But to speed up the process, or for horses that aren’t learning, trainers developed a range of techniques. These first two are still allowed, under varying circumstances, during training and in the show ring:
Using padding and weighted shoes to change how the horse stands and moves its feet (akin to how high heels shift a person’s weight and stance).
Placing chains around the tops of their hooves to encourage them to pick their feet up more highly than they would otherwise (presumably they’re irritating).
However, some trainers use prohibited versions of these two items, using pads and chains that were not within the allowable height and weight.
The next three techniques are illegal, but many insiders argue that they are still common. I warn you now: much of this post from this point on will be very upsetting for many readers.
Place screws or nails in different parts of their front hooves or soles to cause discomfort. While horses’ hooves are hard, the soles are quite sensitive. The screws or nails make it painful for the horse to put its front legs down, so it shifts its weight back, helping to attain the gait.
Intentionally cut the horse’s front hooves so short that the sensitive sole hits the ground directly, which is extremely painful (think of what happens if your fingernail gets cut or broken off too short).
Coating a horse’s hooves and lower legs with caustic substances, then wrapping them in plastic wrap, for as long as several days, until they’re very sore — a process called, aptly, “soring.” This causes the horse to shift weight to its back legs in an effort to reduce the pain from the front feet. This is often used in conjunction with chains, which irritate and rub up against the raw skin.
Many inspectors argue that these practices, once widely accepted in the industry, are still common today. Recently the Humane Society released undercover footage of training practices at Whitter Stables, a facility in Collierville, TN that has been the center of a federal investigation. It is a very distressing video that includes many of the practices listed above, as well as horses being whipped when they have difficulty standing:
In 1970, Congress passed the Horse Protection Act, which outlawed the exhibition of sored horses. So trainers have developed techniques to hide them; they paint horses’ hooves and legs to cover evidence of soring or use boots to cover tacks embedded in their hooves.
They also beat them so that they learn not to show any sign of pain when inspected before a show. They do this by simulating an inspection and then punishing the horse if it shows any signs of distress (e.g., punching or hitting them in the face or administering an electric shock). Eventually horses learn that if they flinch, they get hurt twice; hiding signs of pain prevents the infliction of more suffering.
Trainers may also use a fast-acting but short-term numbing agent to reduce the pain just long enough to pass inspections. Other trainers and owners simply leave a show if word gets out that USDA inspectors were present.
The Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders’ and Exhibitors’ Association argues that these practices are not widespread. However, in 2006 the last class in the World Grand Champion competition at the Tennessee Walking Horse Celebration (the TWH show equivalent of the Kentucky Derby, in terms of importance) was canceled because of the 10 entered horses, 5 did not pass the inspection and another was removed by the owner without being inspected. In 2009, the USDA issued over 400 violations at the Celebration.
A USDA report states the organization only had the resources to send their own veterinarians to 6% of official TWH shows in 2007; the other 94% were inspected by individuals hired, trained, and licensed by organizations sponsoring shows, a system the USDA found to be plagued by conflicts of interest. The report also noted that hostility toward USDA inspectors is so high that they routinely bring police or armed security with them to shows.
Jackie McConnell, the trainer in the video, has been indicted on federal charges. But without sustained attention and commitment to punishing violators, the problem will continue due to the pressure to produce horses that satisfy the tastes that have become entrenched in the industry. As one industry insider explained to Horse Illustrated magazine in 2004,
As long as the big lick wins at shows, the trainer must produce it to stay in business….The day a trainer stops producing big lick horses is the day all the horses in his or her barn are removed and taken to another trainer. The pressure is enormous.
Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.
About Sociological Images
Sociological Images encourages people to exercise and develop their sociological imaginations with discussions of compelling visuals that span the breadth of sociological inquiry. Read more…
