Technically yesterday was tax day, but since it fell on a weekend and today is a holiday in Washington, D.C. (Emancipation Day), Americans actually got two extra days to file. Whether you’re already done or are wildly rushing to finish up, you might enjoy this short video by political economist Robert Reich, explaining how the concentration of wealth, and the ability of the very wealthy to redesign the tax code to their advantage have affected the overall economy:
Via The Sociology Cinema.
P. Mae Cooper sent in a report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research that looked at economic insecurity in the U.S. Using data from the Census Bureau’s Annual Social and Economic Supplement, the authors calculate the percentage of good jobs in each state. They define a good job as one that pays at least $17/hr (the inflation-adjusted median income for men in 1979), which for a full-time year-round worker would mean an annual income around $35,000, and which provides health insurance and retirement benefits. Overall, about 1 in 4 jobs fit this definition of a good job, with quite a bit of variation by state:
The data was for 2003-2005, so this doesn’t reflect any effect of the recession on the types of jobs available.
They also calculated the % of jobs that don’t meet any of the elements of a good job — that is, they pay under $17/hr, they don’t provide health insurance, and they don’t have any retirement plan available. These are more common than good jobs, making up about a third of all jobs in the typical state:
One criticism of the official poverty line is that it doesn’t account for regional differences in cost of living, as well as supplementary forms of income supports (Social Security, unemployment, etc.). The authors used Survey of Income and Program Participation data to calculate economic insecurity by taking into account regional costs of living.
The calculations include data for 1) working families and 2) only those families that have 1 or 2 adults and o to 3 children, so it excludes families where not adults are employed or that have 4 or more children. And the data are for 2001-2003, so again, it doesn’t reflect the recession. This map shows the % of the included families whose total income is less than the basic budget standard (that is, actual market costs of essential goods and services in over 400 localities) where they live. About 22% of families were economically insecure, with a lot of variation by state:
I really hope someone updates this analysis, given the recession, but the report provides a general illustration of an important aspect of our economy, and the limitations of a measure of poverty that entirely ignores regional costs of living.
Cross-posted from cyborgology.
On February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black high school student, was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a White Hispanic neighborhood watch captain. The case has become a symbolic battleground. Artist Israel McCloud was inspired to paint a mural in his honor in Houston.
As Jessie Daniels points out at Racism Review, battles over racism have shifted into the realm of social media, where digital and physical race relations persist in an augmented relationship. We see this in both anti-racist discourses and the racial smear campaigns surrounding the Martin/Zimmerman case.
Although it is important to expose the overtly racist tactics utilized by some of Zimmerman’s defenders, I want to talk about a more subtle, and so perhaps more problematic, form of racial discourse. A prominent strategy of protest arising from the left may inadvertently perpetuate, rather than challenge, racial hierarchies in their most dehumanizing form.
This tactic has made the rounds on my own Facebook Newsfeed, and is one in which I, prior to more critical thought, actively participated: the creation of images and texts that couple Black bodies with prestigious social positions and ask viewers to problematize racialized assumptions that often lead to faulty first impressions—which in turn lead to physical danger for the racialized subject. This tactic comes in two forms: political memes and case examples.
The memes, such as the one pictured below, are direct and general. They argue that Black bodies are assumed dangerous unless proven otherwise. This meme warns us that we might treat a doctor as a criminal purely based on skin color:
I (regretfully) posted this meme to my own Facebook wall. Rather than delete the meme, I added this post to the comment thread as a public declaration of my error.
The case examples are more in depth, but accomplish a similar task. They picture a clean-cut, Black male body. They list his credentials, and then tell of his physical abuse at the hands of scared, racist White authority figures:
Copied from my Facebook Newsfeed.
Activists strategically link these memes and cases to Trayvon Martin’s story, highlighting his clean record and child-like face. This protest tactic honors Martin (and other Black boys and men who have been hurt because of a racist culture) and spotlights the problematic racialized lens within which Americans largely operate.
Both forms of this protest tactic tell an empirically accurate story. Simultaneously, however, they are gross oversimplifications that perpetuate oppressive hierarchies that lie at the intersection of race and class. They work to differentiate the “good” from the “bad” kind of racial minority—and imply that the life of the former is more valuable.
We are warned that our racial assumptions may lead to the wrongful and tragic harm of a “good” racial minority—reinforcing the devaluation of poor, under-educated, over-policed and under-protected people of color. Indeed, as the left fights accusations that Trayvon Martin sold drugs, we forget to ask: “SO WHAT IF HE DID?!” Would he somehow be less human? Would his murder be less atrocious? As the left justifiably decries the accusative investigations into Trayvon’s life, some protest tactics effectively present the opposite side of the same coin.
The empirical reality of Blackness in America is that it often intersects with poverty, which in turn, intersects with crime. A poor Black man with a criminal record is an artifact of a deeply embedded racial system. The memes and case examples discussed above perpetuate the devaluation of the Poor Black subject, marginalizing him against those who are upwardly mobile. In utilizing this protest tactic we fail to address the grittier realities of race in America that led George Zimmerman to perceive an anonymous, unarmed Black boy as a threat. We not only ignore these realities, but become naively complicit in their reproduction.
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Jenny Davis is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M University. She studies self, identity, and human-technology interaction. She blogs for cyborgology.org. Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jup83
In her excellent article “Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families,” Annette Lareau looks at differences in childrearing strategies, finding that class differences were more important than racial differences. Lareau argued that childrearing methods are one way in which class-based advantages are reproduced. Middle-class parents use a “concerted cultivation” model, which involved high levels of involvement in extracurricular activities. Working-class parents engaged in what Lareau calls an “accomplishment of natural growth” model, which emphasizes loving children and providing for them and giving children much more leisure time that is self-directed and unstructured. As Lareau writes,
Working-class and poor children spent most of their free time in informal play; middle-class children took part in many adult-organized activities designed to develop their individual talents and interests. (p. 761).
There are downsides to the concerted cultivation model. The range of activities children are involved in “dominate family life and create enormous labor, particularly for mothers” (p. 748). The emphasis on organized activities led to generally weak family ties, as well as weak social ties more generally, since they were based on participation in activities (extracurricular sports, classes, etc.) that have high turnover rates in membership and often last a few weeks regardless. However, Lareau argues that the concerted cultivation model ultimately transmits class advantages, given that the behaviors and assumptions it socializes children into prepare them well for a social world dominated by other middle-class professionals. And she argues that these different models are not just based on preferences; existing class inequalities make it much more difficult for working-class parents to follow the concerted cultivation model:
Enrollment fees that middle-class parents dismissed as “negligible” were formidable expenses for less affluent families…Moreover, families needed reliable private transportation and flexible work schedules to get children to and from events. These resources were disproportionately concentrated in middle-class families. (p. 771)
The Russel Sage foundation recently posted a graph that highlights class differences in spending on activities and products meant to aid child development, learning, and general enrichment. The graph, from Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances, shows how the gap in spending on such items — which includes things such as tutoring, private schooling, summer camps, high-quality childcare, and computers — has grown between the poorest and wealthiest Americans in recent decades, illustrating Lareau’s argument about differential access to the products and activities central to the concerted cultivation model:
Full cites:
Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane. 2011. Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances, ed. Greg Duncan and Richard Murnane. NY: Russell Sage. [Graph from p. 11.]
Annette Lareau. 2002. “Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families.” American Sociological Review 67(5): 747-776.
Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.
In an earlier post we reviewed research by epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett showing that income inequality contributes to a whole host of negative outcomes, including higher rates of mental illness, drug use, obesity, infant death, imprisonment, and interpersonal trust.
In the six-minute video below, Kate Pickett talks about how more equal societies are kinder to each other, give more in foreign aid, are less status-conscious, consume less, and even recycle more. Based on this, she argues that reducing inequality within societies is a good strategy towards addressing climate change.
How to increase equality? It turns out there are lots of options.
See Dr. Pickett making similar arguments as to why raising the average national income in developed countries doesn’t make people happier or enable them to live longer, why unequal societies are more violent, and how status inequality increases stress.
And see more about income inequality and national well-being at Equality Trust.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Autism appears to be on the rise. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that there are 20 times more cases of autism today than there were in the 1980s. This figure, from the Los Angeles Times, shows a 200% increase in California:
The rise in cases of autism led scientists to ask whether there was an actual increase in incidence or if we were just getting better at identifying it. The evidence seems to suggest that it’s (at least mostly) the latter. Said anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker: “Once we are primed to see something, we see it and wonder how we could have never seen it before.”
But how to explain disparities like this?
Often regional differences in health and mental health can be traced to heavier environmental toxin loads. In most of those cases, though, clusters of illness occur in poor and often disproportionately non-white neighborhoods. Autism clusters were happening in class-privileged places.
Sociologist Peter Bearman discovered that these clusters were the result of conversation. Class-privileged parents had the resources to get their child diagnosed, then they talked to other parents. Some of these parents would recognize the symptoms and take their child to the doctor and… voila… a cluster. “Living within 250 meters [of a child diagnosed with autism], reports the Los Angeles Times, boosted the chances by 42%, compared to living between 500 and 1,000 meters away.”
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Hennessy Youngman is one of things-on-the-internetz that validates the entire enterprise. In the fast and fascinating 10 minute clip here, Youngman traces the history of performance art, linking it to Occupy and our contemporary engagement with the internet. Oh, and totally worth watching to the end.
(Hennessy, if you’re reading, I was the one that tweeted at you to do a video about The Levitated Mass. Nobody could do it quite like you! PS – whisky is my drink too.)
Also from Hennessy Youngman:
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Cross-posted at Reports from the Economic Front.
The Great Recession ended in June 2009, which means we have been in economic expansion for almost 3 years. Lately the news has been filled with reports of positive economic trends, but how seriously should we take these reports?
One indicator worth looking at is median household income (the red line below). Unfortunately its trend suggests little reason for cheer. In January 2012, median household income was $50,020. That was 5.4% lower than it was in June 2009. Even worse, as the chart below reveals, after a brief uptick it headed back down again.
It is true that employment is finally growing, a development reflected in the decline in the unemployment rate (the blue line above). Unfortunately, this has done little to boost wages. In fact, real wages actually fell in 2011. The first chart below highlights the downward turn. The second chart reveals just how far per capita earnings remain below historical trend.
This situation helps to explain why growth has been so anemic. As the Wall Street Journal wrote:
Many economists in the past few weeks have again reduced their estimates of growth. The economy by many estimates is on track to grow at an annual rate of less than 2% in the first three months of 2012. The economy expanded just 1.7% last year. And since the final months of 2009, when unemployment peaked, the economy has expanded at a pretty paltry 2.5% annual rate.
Without a dramatic change in median household income, growth will remain slow and even the limited employment gains we currently celebrate will likely prove impossible to sustain. Given the current political climate, it is hard to see how this expansion will be either long lasting or bring meaningful improvements in majority living and working conditions.
