social inequality

The New York Times has published an essay by RSF author Nancy DiTomaso on the relationship between social networks and racial inequality. In the essay, DiTomaso draws from her research in The American Non-Dilemma, which argues that economic racial disparities are perpetuated not by explicit racism, but by seemingly innocuous processes, such as networking, that institutionalize racial bias:

The mechanism that reproduces inequality, in other words, may be inclusion more than exclusion. And while exclusion or discrimination is illegal, inclusion or favoritism is not — meaning it can be more insidious and largely immune to legal challenges.

Favoritism is almost universal in today’s job market. In interviews with hundreds of people on this topic, I found that all but a handful used the help of family and friends to find 70 percent of the jobs they held over their lifetimes; they all used personal networks and insider information if it was available to them.

Do the poor have as much say as the rich in the American political system? In the wake of the 2012 Presidential race – the most expensive in history – as well as the landmark 2010 Citizens United case, the political influence of the wealthy has become a much-discussed topic. However, our understanding of how rising inequality has influenced the U.S. political process and the policies it has produced remains limited. While both scholars and citizens suspect economic elites have great influence on politics, social scientists have yet to quantify that influence and identify the causal mechanisms linking elite influence and money to political outcomes.

More Research on Political Inequality
• RSF Book: Inequality and American Democracy
• RSF Book: Democracy, Inequality, and Representation
• RSF Book: Remaking America: Democracy and Public Policy in an Age of Inequality
• RSF Book: Who Gets Represented?

Emerging empirical evidence has shown some promising pathways for future research. In Affluence and Influence, RSF grantee Martin Gilens of Princeton University shows that America's policymakers respond almost exclusively to the preferences of the economically advantaged. Moreover, a recent paper by political scientist Nicholas Carnes of Duke University demonstrates that the near-absence of the working-class people in public office promotes economic policies that benefit white-collar Americans at the expense of the less fortunate.

To deepen our understanding of the relationship between economic and political inequality, the Russell Sage Foundation launched its Politics of Inequality initiative in 2006. As part of this effort, the Foundation recently created a new working group to expand the research field of economic influence on political life by examining how economic elites have influenced the myriad ways politics is done and the relationship between these processes and inequality. The research questions to be explored through this working group, led by sociologist Shamus Khan and political scientist Dorian Warren of Columbia University, are twofold. First, how do elites use their economic resources to influence political outcomes? And second, how has the increase in inequality over the past forty years—particularly the increase in the wealth/income share of elites—impacted processes of political influence? And how have the outcomes of political influence affected the overall levels of inequality?

Nancy DiTomaso is Professor of Management and Global Business at Rutgers Business School—Newark and New Brunswick. She is also the author of our latest book, The American Non-Dilemma, which provides a comprehensive examination of the persistence of racial inequality in the post-Civil Rights era and how it plays out in today's economic and political context.

Q: Let’s start with the title of your book, a reference to the landmark text by Gunnar Myrdal, The American Dilemma. Myrdal argued that white Americans would eventually face the contradiction or dilemma between their belief in American values such as equality and fair opportunity on the one hand, and the growing attention to racial inequality on the other. You argue, however, that for many whites, no such dilemma currently exists. Why do you believe whites are "uncertain allies in the struggle for civil rights"?

More Research on Racial Inequality
• RSF Book: Documenting Desegregation
• RSF Book: Invisible Men
• RSF Book: Steady Gains, Stalled Progress

A: Myrdal’s argument, contrary to the way it is often portrayed, is that white Americans would experience a moral dilemma because of the contradiction between the foundational beliefs held by all Americans toward equality before the law and fair play and the growing evidence at the time he was writing of racial inequality in the politics of the 1930s, as well as in the racial dimension of World War II (i.e., a fight against an ideology of racial supremacy in Germany and Japan), which he claimed was understood around the world. He believed that this moral dilemma would lead some whites, especially in the North, to use both law and social movements to bring about an end to the racial caste system, especially in the South.

I found in my analysis, however, that in the post-Civil Rights period, the framing of racial inequality in terms of racism and discrimination, that is, of some whites doing bad things to or holding back nonwhites, especially African Americans, contributes to an American Non-Dilemma. Because whites do not have to actively exclude or do bad things to blacks in order to benefit from racial inequality, they do not experience the kind of moral dilemma that Myrdal believed would move them to support social change. Thus, in the post-Civil Rights period, I argue that it is whites helping other whites that may be as much a factor in reproducing racial inequality as whites discriminating against or expressing racist feelings towards blacks and other nonwhites. Indeed, most whites say they believe in civil rights, believe that equal opportunity is the standard of fairness, and believe that everyone should be rewarded for their efforts. They do not readily think about the extent to which they drew on the social resources and help from family, friends, and acquaintances in order to get their own jobs. Yet, I found that this is how the interviewees in my study found most of their jobs throughout their lifetimes.

Q: One of your main arguments is that the national conversation on racial inequality remains too focused on racism, or racial discrimination. Instead, you say we should focus on “in-group favoritism” in terms of whites helping other whites. Explain how this dynamic works, and why you think it’s a better frame for thinking about racial inequality.

A: Because whites disproportionately hold jobs with more authority, higher pay, more opportunities for skill development and training, and more links to other jobs, they can benefit from racial inequality without being racists and without discriminating against blacks and other nonwhites. In fact, I argue that the ultimate white privilege is the privilege not to be racist and still benefit from racial inequality.

In my study, I found that 99 percent of the interviewees found 70 percent of the jobs they had held throughout their lifetimes with the added help from family, friends, or acquaintances, who provided them with inside information not available to others, such as when a job was available, used influence on their behalf, or actually offered them an opportunity or a job. That is, although all of the interviewees said that equal opportunity is the standard of fairness, almost all of them actively sought "unequal opportunity” in their own lives. The last thing that they would want was to have to compete equally in the job market, when finding a job that paid a living wage, provided benefits and some job security was so important to having a decent life. Given this, most wanted to find ways to “get ahead” or to “gain advantage.”

Perspectives on Politics has published an important RSF-funded paper entitled "Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans." Written by Benjamin Page, Larry Bartels and Jason Seawright, the study reports findings from a groundbreaking effort to provide "systematic evidence on the policy preferences of really wealthy Americans." Here is the abstract:

It is important to know what wealthy Americans seek from politics and how (if at all) their policy preferences differ from those of other citizens. There can be little doubt that the wealthy exert more political influence than the less affluent do. If they tend to get their way in some areas of public policy, and if they have policy preferences that differ significantly from those of most Americans, the results could be troubling for democratic policy making. Recent evidence indicates that “affluent” Americans in the top fifth of the income distribution are socially more liberal but economically more conservative than others. But until now there has been little systematic evidence about the truly wealthy, such as the top 1 percent. We report the results of a pilot study of the political views and activities of the top 1 percent or so of US wealth-holders. We find that they are extremely active politically and that they are much more conservative than the American public as a whole with respect to important policies concerning taxation, economic regulation, and especially social welfare programs. Variation within this wealthy group suggests that the top one-tenth of 1 percent of wealth-holders (people with $40 million or more in net worth) may tend to hold still more conservative views that are even more distinct from those of the general public. We suggest that these distinctive policy preferences may help account for why certain public policies in the United States appear to deviate from what the majority of US citizens wants the government to do. If this is so, it raises serious issues for democratic theory.

Over the past month or so, we've shared excerpts and data from our new book, The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What It Means for American Schools, which analyzes boys' stagnating educational achievement over the last several decades. Yesterday, Claudia Buchmann, a co-author of the book, appeared on the MSNBC show The Cycle to discuss the volume's research:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Last week, we shared data from our new book, The Rise of Women, about the persistence of gender segregation in higher education. The trend is a puzzling one: women have made extraordinary gains at all levels of education over the past fifty years, but they are still underrepresented in engineering and the physical sciences (and overrepresented in the social sciences and humanities). More worryingly, gender persistence in academic majors has remained relatively stable for the past two decades.

Why don't more women choose to major in the so-called STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)? In chapter eight of the book, authors Claudia Buchmann and Thomas DiPrete examine several prominent theories (presented below). Their own analysis shows that the high school years are crucial to understanding trends in gender segregation. Between grades 8 and 12, girls tend to lose interest in the sciences, possibly because of prevailing stereotypes that link ability in sciences with masculine identity. They suggest that science-intensive high schools could make a big difference: "Some schools may do an especially good job of eroding common stereotypes that link majoring in a STEM field with masculine identity. Recent evidence suggests that schools with strong science and math curricula are particularly good at delinking STEM fields from masculine stereotypes."

Here are the major arguments they make in the chapter:

1. Gender Segregation in Majors Is Not About Intellectual Ability

Using data from HSB, NELS, and ELS, Mann and DiPrete (2012) found that math test scores explain even less of the gender gap in physical science and engineering majors than was found in the College and Beyond data analyzed by Turner and Bowen (1999). Yu Xie and Kimberlee Shauman (2003) similarly assessed the most commonly asserted causes for women’s underrepresentation in the hard sciences and engineering fields. Like Turner and Bowen (1999), Xie and Shauman concluded that the gender differences in science majors are not due to gender differences in math ability or math training in high school, since these gaps have closed. Nor are they due to girls’ lower participation in high school math and science course work.[...] These findings are consistent with other studies that also find gender differences in math and science achievement, as indicated by standardized tests, to be too small to explain gender differences in math and science education or occupations (Hyde 2005; Hyde et al. 2008; Spelke 2005).

2. Girls Are Not Necessarily Driven by Different Career "Values"

[Recent] research suggests that gender differences in values have little power to explain gender differences in choice of college major. As Mann and DiPrete (2012) note, values related to career-family conflict have not impeded the trend to full gender equality in law and medical schools, even if gender segregation persists in the choice of specialties within these two professions. In a direct assessment of the role of values in choice of major, Mann and DiPrete used data from HSB, NELS, and ELS to assess the impact of three dimensions of values: aspirations toward having a family, the importance of money and success, and the importance of helping others. They found that students who value the importance of helping others and who have stronger family aspirations are less likely to major in the physical sciences or engineering, while those who value the importance of helping others are more likely to major in the biological sciences. However, these effects were small; they accounted for very little of the gender difference in majoring in STEM versus non-STEM fields and also very little of the gender difference in the distribution of majors within STEM fields.

In our last post on our new book, The Rise of Women, we presented seven charts that document the rapid gains women have made in education during the latter half of the 20th century. Women are more likely than men to persist in college, obtain degrees, and enroll in graduate school. But even as the number of advanced degrees earned by women has increased dramatically, gender segregation in fields of study has stubbornly persisted. Men and women in college choose different majors, a trend that has major implications for gender segregation in the workplace. The following two charts, also taken from The Rise of Women, show the academic trends among male and female college students:

Authors Thomas DiPrete and Claudia Buchmann explain the data presented above:

These figures demonstrate that sharp differences persist in the distribution of degrees within each gender. No single field of the seven dominates the male distribution, though business degrees have constituted the largest share since the late 1970s, while engineering and other health and education degrees constitute the second and third largest shares. The natural and life sciences constitute the smallest shares throughout the thirty-five-year period.

The trends for females in figure 8.4 look quite different than the trends for males. First, degrees in other health and in education constitute a much larger share of the degrees for women than for men. This category constituted over 60 percent of the degrees earned by women in the early 1970s, and its share fell toward 40 percent as opportunities for women increased in other fields. Over the past twenty years, however, this area has held a steady and even slightly increasing share of the advanced degrees for women. Another prominent trend shown in figure 8.4 concerns business degrees, which constituted a rapidly growing share of degrees for women until the mid-1980s and a more gradually growing share thereafter. Degrees in medicine, dentistry, and law also constituted a growing share of all degrees earned by women until the mid-1980s, but since then their share has gradually fallen, even though the female share of all degrees awarded in these areas has grown continually throughout this period (see figure A.12). Degrees in physical science, mathematics, and engineering have constituted a relatively small share of all degrees earned by women from the early 1970s to the present day (emphasis added).

Jane Waldfogel is a professor of social work and public affairs at Columbia University School of Social Work. She has written extensively on early childhood education and the impact of public policies on child and family well-being. In this interview, she discusses President Obama's recent proposal to expand access to preschool.

Q: In response to President Obama's preschool plan, many opinion writers pointed skeptically to Head Start, the major federal early education program. It seems to be settled fact in Washington that Head Start, to quote TIME's Joe Klein, "simply does not work." Others argue that most of the other research on early education comes from targeted, intensive programs, such as the Perry Project, whose quality will probably not be replicated in scaled-up efforts. So let me ask you -- do you think that available research supports higher investments in early education programs? Is there evidence or unanswered questions that gives you pause about expanding preschool access?

More Research on Early Childhood Education
• RSF Book: From Parents to Children: The Intergenerational Transmission of Advantage
• RSF Book: Persistence, Privilege, and Parenting: The Comparative Study of Intergenerational Mobility
• RSF Book: Britain's War on Poverty

A: While policymakers in Washington have been debating the merits of Head Start, and the generalizability of the early model programs such as Perry, state lawmakers have been quietly moving forward with universal pre-kindergarten (pre-K). These pre-K programs, which now serve more than 20% of 4-year olds, differ from Head Start, and the early model programs, in some very important ways. First, they are universal – they are open to all children in the community (although when resources are limited, states do try to serve disadvantaged children and communities first). And second, they are administered and supervised by the schools (even if not always located at schools – in some states, community-based providers can be approved as pre-K providers as long as they meet the pre-K requirements, which include highly qualified teaching staff and approved curricula). This quiet pre-K expansion has been going on for some time, and we now have quite a bit of evidence about its effects (see review in Ruhm & Waldfogel, 2012). That evidence is clear – children who have the opportunity to attend pre-K enter school with better reading and math skills, and these effects tend to be largest for the children who would otherwise be the furthest behind. These results come from studies in several states, using rigorous methods such as regression discontinuity analyses. Governors and state legislators are familiar with this research evidence, and they have been eager to expand pre-K programs. But it’s tough to do this with limited state funds. So that’s why the Obama initiative to make federal funds available is so welcome.

Writing for The Atlantic, Philip Cohen, a sociologist and creator of the excellent blog Family Inequality, praises our latest book, The Rise of Women:

The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What it Means for American Schools is both ambitious and modest in its goals: Sociologists Thomas DiPrete and Claudia Buchmann provide an ambitious analysis of why and how girls are outperforming boys in high school and going on to get a disproportionate share of college degrees. However, the authors modestly remain within their subject matter and avoid the unsupported claims about women's looming social dominance that have inflated much of the conversation about gender dynamics today.

This allows us to have a reasonable, valuable conversation about an important problem: the failure of the education system to help a majority of students to reach their academic potential. We clearly do not have a problem of over-education among women. Even among Whites alone, women as well as men are graduating college at rates lower than those in the most educationally advanced societies (which used to include the United States). Rather, we have a dysfunctional system that underperforms for men more than for women.

Rather than focusing on the full range of educational failures, DiPrete and Buchmann focus on a low-hanging fruit policy question: How can we improve college degree attainment for the approximately one-third of students who are ready to graduate college but do not, because they do not have the resources, they change their minds for some reason, or they are not adequately supported in the endeavor?

Our latest book, The Rise of Women: The Gender Gap in Education and What It Means for American Schools provides a detailed and accessible account of women's rapid educational gains over the past 50 years. It also examines several enduring policy problems, such as stagnating male college graduation rates, and why women continue to lag behind men in engineering and physical science degrees. Below, we have compiled seven charts from The Rise of Women that show recent trends in the gender gap in education, along with a brief explanation of each figure (also taken from the book):

The figure above reports trends in GPA over time for male and female students. Several points are noteworthy. First, the figure shows an increase in overall GPA between 1972 and 2004 for males and females of about 0.4 to 0.5 on a 4.0 GPA scale. A statistically significant female-favorable grade gap exists for each time point, and the size of these gaps remains relatively constant, ranging from about 0.24 to 0.30 over the period.

Women born in the late 1950s and early 1960s (who were of college age during the 1980s) overtook men in their rates of completing bachelor's degrees. On a cohort-by-cohort basis, the male college graduation rate peaked around the birth cohort of 1950 and then remained essentially flat for about fifteen birth cohorts. By 2010 twenty-six- to twenty-eight-year-old females had a more than eight-percentage-point lead in college degree receipt over their male counterparts. This constitutes an enormous change in the relative position of men and women in a very short period of time.

The figure displays trends in men’s and women’s completion of master’s degrees from the 1969–1970 school year to the 2009–2010 school year. Just over three decades ago, in 1969–1970, more men than women completed master’s degrees: 143,083 master’s degrees were awarded to men, compared to 92,481 awarded to women (Snyder and Dillow 2012). But from 1980 onward, women’s rate of master’s degree completion grew more rapidly. By 2009–2010, women were awarded roughly 50 percent more master’s degrees than men—417,828 versus 275,197.

Women’s growth in professional and doctoral degrees has been slower than that for bachelor’s or master’s degrees, and they have only recently reached parity with men in professional and doctoral degrees. In 1970 men completed sixteen times more professional degrees than women did. But since 1982, the number of professional degrees completed by men has declined slightly (from 40,229 in 1982 to 34,661 in 2010), while women’s professional degree completion has increased almost twentyfold—from 1,534 professional degrees in 1970 to 30,289 in 2010.

In 1969-1970, women comprised almost 40 percent of all students awarded master's degrees, but they comprised only 11 percent of students awarded doctoral degrees and 6 percent of students awarded professional degrees. Women's share of master's degrees has grown over the past three decades, and women currently comprise 60 percent of students earning master's degrees.

The number of degrees earned by women differs enormously across these fields (and therefore the counts are reported on a log scale). Women have increased the number of advanced degrees they earn in all fields since the early 1970s. Since the 1980s, women have earned more than 50 percent of the advanced degrees in the social sciences and humanities as well as in other health professions and education; the same has been true in social sciences and humanities since the mid-1970s. In life sciences, women achieved parity and then surpassed men in advanced degrees in the early years of the current decade. They have nearly reached parity with men in the combined fields of medicine, dentistry, and law, and they have been heading steadily toward parity in advanced business degrees. Women’s share of total degrees in physical sciences and mathematics is lower than in these other fields, but their steady gains in physical sciences and mathematics show no sign of plateauing.