culture

Originally published in January 2016.

Americans are engaged in a great gun war, one that has raged for at least four decades. The war has intensified to the point where citizens cannot agree on the most basic facts. How many guns do Americans own? Does carrying firearms do more harm than good? Do firearm regulations work?

Although the answers are hotly disputed, most Americans share the goal of reducing our unconscionably high rate of gun violence. In a politically challenging environment, it makes sense to pull together what is known about guns and gun violence and look for policy approaches that could garner broad support.Most Americans share the goal of reducing our unconscionably high rate of gun violence. more...

Back in October 2014, pollster Robert Jones pointed out that white evangelicals were declining as a percentage of the U.S. population, even in the South – which could have been bad news for Republicans who count on loyal support from white evangelical voters. Starting in November 2014, Jones predicted, evangelical population decline could start tipping close races to Democrats in Bible Belt states like Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, and North Carolina. But Election Day on November 4^th proved Jones wrong. White evangelicals turned out at high rates and played a major role in handing Republicans decisive victories in Senate races across the country. White evangelicals may be declining as a percentage of the population, but because they flock to the polls when Democratic constituencies often stay home, they still rule the midterms.For good and for ill, white evangelical Christians are one of the most effectively organized and reliably Republican constituencies. more...

On May 23, 2014, at Isla Vista near the University of California at Santa Barbara, Elliot Rodger embarked on a violent spree that killed six students and injured 13 others, before killing himself. Police later uncovered a 137-page manifesto titled “My Twisted World,” in which Rodger expressed his desire to punish women for rejecting him on what he called a “Day of Retribution.” For weeks after the event, the nation was transfixed by the horror of Rodger’s actions. The family members of the victims called for gun law reform while others highlighted the gender themes this violent gunman invoked.

Indeed, this highly publicized tragedy links two devastating challenges the United States faces: violence against women and deadly gun crimes. Gun violence in America – including mass shootings like the Rodger case – often falls on women the gunman knows. Despite decades of efforts to reduce the threats, American women continue to be at heightened risk for death or harm by gun violence. My research explores why existing policies fall short of remedying this problem, in part because of gaps in background checks for would-be gun buyers and the proliferation of unlicensed firearms sellers. I also consider why the political environment makes it hard for advocates to advance legislation to reduce gun violence. In the course of my research, the gender disparities have become evident.In the year 2011, of all the women murdered with guns in cases where relationships to the offender were known, 70% were shot to death by a current or former intimate partner.

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With over fifteen percent of Americans living below the poverty level, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers are searching for innovative strategies to advance economic and social development. Some business-minded philanthropists are exploring the concept of social enterprise: businesses that employ for-profit methods to create a positive social impact. According to a 2012 national field study conducted by the Social Enterprise Alliance, the top five challenges social enterprises address include workforce development, housing, community and economic development, education, and health care provision. In order to address deficits in these areas, social enterprises often examine social problems in a given community and then develop social services or programs to reduce or eradicate them. As is true for any business venture, however, the laws governing social enterprises can be difficult to navigate, and current legal rules do not always help entrepreneurs get their ideas off the ground. To maximize the potential of such ventures, we need a thorough understanding of how social enterprises function and what policymakers can do to help them. more...

In late 2015, the City of New York fulfilled the promise of the “MillionTreesNYC” program by planting its millionth tree. While the program was designed primarily to make the city greener and more resilient to floods during storms like Hurricane Sandy, the project also served as a predominantly positive experience for thousands of volunteers, who then went on to become more involved in civic life in their communities.  Since the vast majority of those volunteers came from white, middle class and affluent backgrounds it is hard to determine if the lessons of New York can be applied to other sectors of the population to increase civic engagement, especially among minorities and lower-income Americans.

Benefits beyond the environment

The MillionTreesNYC program is a public-private partnership that was created between Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration and a private nonprofit group, the New York Restoration Project. Of course, trees have many environmental benefits, including providing absorbing carbon, beautifying neighborhoods, creating shade, and preventing soil erosion. Yet we find another benefit: the initiative has also encouraged New Yorkers to get more involved in environmental projects of all sorts and become more engaged citizens overall.

To date, little research has been done on the connections between green initiatives and enhanced citizen participation. In our recent book, Urban Environmental Stewardship and Civic Engagement: How Planting Trees Strengthens the Roots of Democracy, my co-authors and I present findings from a two-year study of more than seven hundred volunteer stewards who got involved in the MillionTrees Initiative.  The findings we present in our book are consistent with those from my research on other environmental projects in New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington DC, which are known for their diverse populations. Nevertheless, the participants in all of these projects tended to be whiter, more highly educated, and more female than their communities overall. The “MillionTreesNYC” initiative encouraged New Yorkers to get more involved in environmental projects, but the participants tended to be whiter, more highly educated, and more female than their communities overall.

Expanding benefits to historically less-advantaged communities

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The share of births to unmarried women in the United States has almost doubled over the last 25 years, going from 22% of births in 1985 to 41% in 2010. These are not just teenagers or older women having babies on their own. Parents who are living together but not married account for much of the overall increase in births to unmarried women, especially in the last decade.  

For babies and children growing up, living with two cohabiting parents in many ways resembles living with two married parents. There are two potential earners contributing to the economics of the household and two potential care-givers. But we cannot just assume that cohabitation and marriage are the same, because couples who have a child while living together are more likely to separate at a later point than married couples who have a child. Furthermore, researchers have found that children’s wellbeing can be undermined when the living arrangements of their parents change.

To draw meaningful conclusions about the impact of rising childbearing among cohabiting couples, we need to learn more about whether cohabiting families are becoming more or less stable over time. Our research focuses specifically on couples who have had a child together. These couples express high hopes that their relationships will last, but what actually happens and with what consequences for their children? We used nationally representative survey data from the 1990s and 2000s to examine changes in the stability of married families, cohabiting families where marriages do not happen, and cohabiting families where parents marry around the time a child arrives.Couples who live together and then get married at some point before or after their first child is born have roughly the same chances of breaking up as couples who marry without ever living together. more...

And What Can Be Done To Make Jobs and Family Life More Predictable

For decades, work-family activists have pressed for policies to give workers flexibility. Some workers, most of them relatively affluent, have seen gains. They have won the ability to adjust their schedules, to choose how many days a week to work, and even to work from home. But as my colleague Dan Clawson and I document in our new book, Unequal Time, many employers in the United States are turning the concept of work schedule flexibility on its head. For employers using disturbing new tactics, “flexibility” means that employees – especially low-wage workers – must come in whenever the boss wants and can be sent home whenever demand is slack.

Unpredictable Schedules and Insufficient Hours 

News stories have featured the chaotic schedules of young people working in retail, cleaning, and fast food jobs – many of whom must come to work with just one day’s notice or work split shifts. About a third of young adults do not know their schedule more than a week in advance. But similar problems are faced by workers of all ages. Unpredictable schedules are becoming the new normal for many U.S. employees – ranging from low-wage nursing assistants to well-paid physicians. In the retail and health care sectors, many workers must call in the night before to find out if they will be needed – and if they will earn the wages they have counted on getting. At a nursing home we studied, for example, one out of three shifts turned out to be different from the official schedule planned in advance. more...

Ten years ago, the state of Florida beefed up its “stand your ground” law – a law allowing a person who harms or kills another, often with a gun, to escape prosecution by claiming that he or she felt threatened and acted in self-defense. In other words, Florida’s law – and many others like it – lets assailants go free merely by asserting their belief that the use of force was necessary to prevent serious harm or death to themselves or bystanders. Those who assert such beliefs become according to Florida law “immune from criminal prosecution and civil action.” Prosecutions are not entirely ruled out, but authorities must meet very difficult standards to pursue cases.

Since 2005, about half of all U.S. states have passed Florida-style laws, or very similar ones. The National Rifle Association has led the charge, arguing that stand your ground laws will improve public safety and protect honest citizens.

By now, however, there is clear and compelling evidence that such laws have failed to improve public safety – and have encouraged mayhem reminiscent of America’s old Wild West. Laws allowing claims of self-defense have existed for over a century, but Florida’s new law and its imitators dramatically alter the law enforcement equation. According to David LaBahn of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, investigations of civilian killings are now often hamstrung by legal protections greater than those afforded police officers who use lethal force.Since 2005, about half of all U.S. states have passed Florida-style or very similar laws, or very similar ones. The NRA has led the charge, arguing that stand your ground laws will improve public safety and protect honest citizens.

The Florida Experience

Florida’s 2005 law was invoked in nearly 200 shooting cases through 2012 – a majority of them involving fatalities. The cases were documented by the Tampa Bay Times:

• The Florida law’s chief beneficiaries were “those with records of crime and violence.” Nearly 60 percent of those making self-defense claims after killing someone had been arrested at least once before; a third had been accused of violent crimes or drug offenses; and over one-third had illegally carried guns or had threatened others with guns.
• In seven of every ten stand your ground cases, the person killed was unarmed – and in 79 percent of the cases, the assailant could have retreated to avoid the confrontation.
• Shooters who invoked stand your ground claims under Florida’s 2005 law succeeded in escaping prosecution two-thirds of the time.

Similar Trends in All Stand Your Ground States

Moving beyond Florida alone, other studies have documented equally worrisome trends:

• Reporters at the Wall Street Journal studied “justifiable homicides” nationwide from 2000 to 2010. They found that such killings increased by 85 percent in states with Florida-style laws (even though some states have more limited versions of stand your ground rules on the books). The increase occurred even though overall killings, adjusted for population growth, declined during this same period. According to the Journal investigation, more than 80 percent of the “justifiable” killings involved guns, compared with 65 percent of other killings where claims of justification were not made.
• For the same period, researchers at Texas A&M University found no evidence in data from the Federal Bureau of Investigations that stand your ground laws deterred crimes, including burglary, robbery, or aggravated assault. Instead, in states with newly buttressed stand your ground laws on the books, the homicide rate increased by eight percent – which in human terms added up to about 600 additional homicides annually.
• Drawing on different data, a 2012 National Bureau of Economic Research study found Florida-type laws associated with a 6.8 percent increase in homicides.
• An Urban Institute study found significant racial disparities in “justified” killings between 2005 and 2010. In states without stand your ground laws, killings were ruled justified in 29 percent of instances where the shooter was white and the victim was black (with much lower rates of justification for white on white, black on white, and black on black killings). By contrast, in states with stand your ground laws on the books, white on black killings were accepted as justified 36 percent of the time (with more modest upticks in findings of justification for the other kinds of cases).

Time to Rethink Laws Undermining Public Safety

The evidence is clear: Expanded stand your ground laws combined with more gun-carrying increases unnecessary violent confrontations and deaths. With more than 11 million Americans now licensed to carry guns, we need policies to defuse or avert public confrontations – and police and prosecutors must be able to conduct full investigations when incidents occur. A February 2015 American Bar Association report urges states to scale back legal immunity and restore the “safe retreat” standard in public places – a standard that requires people who feel threatened to avoid confrontation if they can do so safely. Since the beginning of 2015, legislators in ten states, including Florida, have introduced such measures. But many reform proposals are stalled, and 13 states are actually deliberating bills that would fortify stand your ground practices.The evidence is clear: Expanded stand your ground laws, combined with more gun-carrying, increase unnecessary violent confrontations and deaths.

Long ago, Americans north and south acted to contain the dangers of open gun-toting and free-wheeling confrontations. As early as 1686, New Jersey enacted a law against wearing weapons because they induced “great Fear and Quarrels.” In the 1700s, three states passed no-carry laws. In the 1800s, as interpersonal violence and gun carrying spread, 37 states joined the list of those enacting restrictions. Alabama’s 1839 law was titled, “An Act to Suppress the Evil Practice of Carrying Weapons Secretly.” This history makes the current popularity of gun-carrying and stand your ground laws all the more mystifying. Apparently, twenty-first century Americans must now re-learn lessons their ancestors took to heart long ago.

Nearly 2.7 million American children have to cope with the incarceration of one or both of their parents, according to 2010 data from the Pew Charitable Trusts. A growing body of research informs concerned policymakers by showing the extraordinary challenges these children face compared to those whose parents are never imprisoned. Family disruption, economic losses, and greater exposure to crime, abuse, and violence – all can serve to reinforce disadvantages from one generation to the next for these unfortunate children. Because fathers are more often incarcerated than mothers, most research to date has focused on their children. But more remains to be learned to inform policymakers trying to address the special needs of children whose mothers – and perhaps both parents – end up in jail or prison.Nearly 2.7 million American children have to cope with the incarceration of one or both parents.

My co-author Sherry Zhang and I have compared the experiences in childhood and young adulthood of boys and girls who experienced one of four scenarios before their 18^th birthdays – neither parent ever incarcerated; mother incarcerated; father incarcerated; or both parents incarcerated. This research allows us to describe similar and different childhood experiences in these four types of situations. We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health – called “Add Health.” Of the children in this data who had the experience of a parent sent to prison, just over 80% endured paternal incarceration, while 12% experienced maternal incarceration and 7% had both parents sent to prison. Our findings reveal many similarities among sets of young people with one or both parents imprisoned, but some differences also underline the special needs of children with imprisoned mothers.

Differences in Family Situations

The structure of a child’s family patterns much of what he or she experiences when a parent is imprisoned. As shown in previous research, prior to incarceration women are more likely than men to report that they lived with their children. Understandably, therefore, the vast majority of children with incarcerated fathers continue to live with their mothers, while children with incarcerated mothers are more likely to reside with other family members like grandparents. Our findings using data from Add Health suggest that these differences are likely more than temporary arrangements caused by a parent’s imprisonment.The vast majority of children with incarcerated fathers continue to live with their mothers, while children with incarcerated mothers are more likely to reside with other family members like grandparents.

• Although almost all adolescents with fathers in prison during their childhood years were living with mothers (80%) or with either biological parent (92%), far fewer children of imprisoned mothers were living with their mothers (54%) or with either biological parent (71%). And just small proportions of those who resided with biological parents lived with both – in sharp contrast to the vast majority of adolescents whose parents were never incarcerated.
• Other caregivers – such as fathers, grandparents, aunts, and unrelated adults – play a more prominent role for children of incarcerated mothers than for those with imprisoned fathers. In the maternal incarceration group, 17% reported living with their father but not their mother (compared to 6% in the paternal incarceration group and 5% in the group where neither parent went to prison). In comparison to adolescents whose fathers were incarcerated during their childhood, those whose mothers were sent to jail or prison are almost three times more likely to report living with their father but not their mother, four times more likely to report living with someone other than a parent, ten times more likely to report living with a grandparent or aunt, and 13 times more likely to be living with an adoptive or foster mother.
• Differences in family structure linger into adulthood. Although 88% of adolescents whose fathers went to jail or prison name their biological mother as the person who raised them, only 54% of those whose mothers were incarcerated name her as the one who raised them, while 36% point to other family members. However, in our data, neither maternal nor paternal incarceration is associated with the family structures formed by offspring in young adulthood.

Similar Experiences of Economic Hardship, Abuse, and Crime

Compared to those whose parents never went to jail or prison, individuals whose parents were incarcerated are more likely to report that they experienced economic hardship and exposure to abuse, crime, and violence during their childhoods. Tellingly, these adverse experiences are largely comparable for children with either mothers or fathers in jail or prison.

• Adolescents whose parents were ever incarcerated lived as children in households with average incomes below $33,000 – and over one quarter of these household had trouble paying bills and two-thirds received public assistance. Reported economic hardships were greater than for households where neither parent went to jail or prison, but for households with incarcerated parents it made little difference whether the mother or father was the one imprisoned. By young adulthood, those with one or both parents incarcerated during their childhood reported more hardship and lower educational attainment, but again it made little difference whether the mother or father had gone to prison. Our data suggest that previous research findings about the adverse effects of paternal incarceration can be generalized to maternal incarceration as well.
• Compared to those without imprisoned parents, nearly twice as many respondents who had a parent imprisoned (35% versus 17%) reported childhood physical abuse, exposure to violence in their neighborhoods or homes, and participation in incidents of delinquency – but once again, there were no significant differences between paternal and maternal incarceration.

Taken together, these findings have important implications for future research and policy development. Most basically, similarities in the experiences of offspring of incarcerated mothers and fathers suggest that interventions already designed to deal with economic hardships and exposures to abuse, crime, and violence for children of imprisoned fathers can be adapted for those with any imprisoned parents. However, we have also learned that persistent differences in family structure – before, during, and after parental incarceration – could affect access to services, especially for children whose mothers go to prison. Even if appropriate services are available, grandparents or biological fathers who step into parenting roles may not know about them or may feel out of place in asking for help. Steps should be taken to ensure that children of imprisoned mothers do not experience extra disruption and family instability.Interventions already designed to deal with economic hardships and exposures to abuse, crime, and violence for children of imprisoned fathers can be adapted for those with any imprisoned parents.

President Obama has called upon the country to double the number of Americans with college credentials by 2020, but reaching that goal will be impossible without raising the educational attainment of Hispanics, the youngest and fastest growing U.S. ethnic group. People of Hispanic background are pursing college degrees at higher rates and now surpass African Americans as the largest share of non-white students enrolled in U.S. institutions of higher education. But Hispanics still lag behind other groups in actually completing college work to attain their degrees. The reforms America must undertake to boost Hispanic graduation rates include enhancing resources for what the U.S. federal government labels “Hispanic-Serving Institutions” – that is, non-profit, degree-granting colleges and universities whose undergraduate enrollments include at least 25% full-time students of Hispanic descent. My work looks at the special challenges these institutions face and suggests useful steps forward. more...