“Douglas Massey and Stefanie Brodmann provide an ambitious and rigorous examination of how inequality exerts its influence in the lives of young Americans. Analyzing a national longitudinal study and focusing on multiple social contexts—including school, religion, peers, and neighborhoods—the authors discover important new facts and evaluate competing explanations for a diverse set of outcomes. Whether about depression, crime, sexual behavior, obesity, drinking, or human capital attainment, the results are fascinating. Spheres of Influence should be required reading for social scientists and policymakers seeking comprehensive knowledge on the social ecology of class and race inequality.”

—Robert J. Sampson,  Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University

“Spheres of Influence is a pathbreaking book exposing the vast complexities in how race and class intersect in affecting development and well-being as people move from adolescence into adulthood in the United States. The comprehensiveness of the theory and findings about the ways that highly diverse social ecologies of family, school, neighborhood, peers, and religion set the stage for vast inequalities in social outcomes is unparalleled.”

—Lauren J. Krivo, professor of sociology and criminal Justice, Rutgers University

The black-white divide has long haunted the United States as a driving force behind social inequality. Yet, the civil rights movement, the increase in immigration, and the restructuring of the economy in favor of the rich over the last several decades have begun to alter the contours of inequality. Spheres of Influence, co-authored by noted social scientists Douglas S. Massey and Stefanie Brodmann, presents a rigorous new study of the intersections of racial and class disparities today. Massey and Brodmann argue that despite the persistence of potent racial inequality, class effects are drastically transforming social stratification in America.

This data-intensive volume examines the differences in access to material, symbolic, and emotional resources across major racial groups. The authors find that the effects of racial inequality are exacerbated by the class differences within racial groups. For example, when measuring family incomes solely according to race, Massey and Brodmann found that black families’ average income measured $28,400, compared to Hispanic families’ $35,200. But this gap was amplified significantly when class differences within each group were taken into account. With class factored in, inequality across blacks’ and Hispanics’ family incomes increased by a factor of almost four, with lower class black families earning an average income of only $9,300 compared to $97,000 for upper class Hispanics. Massey and Brodmann found similar interactions between class and racial effects on the distribution of symbolic resources, such as occupational status, and emotional resources, such as the presence of a biological father—across racial groups. Although there are racial differences in each group’s access to these resources, like income, these disparities are even more pronounced once class is factored in.

The complex interactions between race and class are apparent in other social spheres, such as health and education. In looking at health disparities across groups, Massey and Brodmann observed no single class effect on the propensity to smoke cigarettes. Among whites, cigarette smoking declined with rising class standing, whereas among Hispanics it increased as class rose. Among Asians and blacks, there was no class difference at all. Similarly, the authors found no single effect of race alone on health: Health differences between whites, Asians, Hispanics, and blacks were small and non-significant in the upper class, but among those in the lower class, intergroup differences were pronounced.

As Massey and Brodmann show, in the United States, a growing kaleidoscope of race-class interactions has replaced pure racial and class disadvantages. By advancing an ecological model of human development that considers the dynamics of race and class across multiple social spheres, Spheres of Influence sheds important light on the factors that are currently driving inequality today.

DOUGLAS S. MASSEY is Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School.

STEFANIE BRODMANN is an economist at the Social Protection and Labor Unit of the World Bank.

Health and medical services should meet individuals’ needs regardless of gender, but in both subtle and overt ways this is very often not the case. Gender biases result not only in flawed access to care but also in insufficient medical research, uninformed diagnoses, and gaps in covering critical needs.

In Health Care and Gender, Charlotte Muller provides a contemporary assessment of the forces that sustain gender biases in the health and medical professions. Beginning with an analysis of gender comparisons in health care usage and adequacy of treatment, Muller discusses the experiences of many different women: working women with insurance coverage, the poor dependent on Medicaid, and the elderly. She also focuses on the issues facing women of reproductive age and shows how poverty or extremely volatile political and ethical controversy may impede their search for basic maternity and family planning services.

Drawing on a large body of evidence from medical, health, and behavioral literature and from national statistics, Health Care and Gender probes a timely and crucial topic. For scholars, analysts, and policy makers interested in women’s studies, health and medical care, gerontology, consumer and labor economics, and social justice. Muller’s thorough analysis looks to the future by presenting agendas for reform, research, and evaluation.

CHARLOTTE F. MULLER is director of the Divisions of Health Economics, Department of Community Medicine, and the professor in the Ritter Department of Geriatrics and Adult Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

The majority of new jobs created in the United States today are low-wage jobs, and a fourth of the labor force earns no more than poverty-level wages. Policymakers and citizens alike agree that declining real wages and constrained spending among such a large segment of workers imperil economic prosperity and living standards for all Americans. Though many policies to assist low-wage workers have been proposed, there is little agreement across the political spectrum about which policies actually reduce poverty and raise income among the working poor. What Works for Workers provides a comprehensive analysis of policy measures designed to address the widening income gap in the United States.

Featuring contributions from an eminent group of social scientists, What Works for Workers evaluates the most high-profile strategies for poverty reduction, including innovative “living wage” ordinances, education programs for African American youth, and better regulation of labor laws pertaining to immigrants. The contributors delve into an extensive body of scholarship on low-wage work to reveal a number of surprising findings. Richard Freeman suggests that labor unions, long assumed to be moribund, have a fighting chance to reclaim their historic redistributive role if they move beyond traditional collective bargaining and establish new ties with other community actors. John Schmitt predicts that the Affordable Care Act will substantially increase insurance coverage for low-wage workers, 38 percent of whom currently lack any kind of health insurance.

Other contributors explore the shortcomings of popular solutions: Stephanie Luce shows that while living wage ordinances rarely lead to job losses, they have not yet covered most low-wage workers. And Jennifer Gordon corrects the notion that a path to legalization alone will fix the plight of immigrant workers. Without energetic regulatory enforcement, she argues, legalization may have limited impact on the exploitation of undocumented workers. Ruth Milkman and Eileen Appelbaum conclude with an analysis of California’s paid family leave program, a policy designed to benefit the working poor, who have few resources that allow them to take time off work to care for children or ill family members. Despite initial opposition, the paid leave program proved more acceptable than expected among employers and provided a much-needed system of wage replacement for low-income workers. In the wake of its success, the initiative has emerged as a useful blueprint for paid leave programs in other states.

Alleviating the low-wage crisis will require a comprehensive set of programs rather than piecemeal interventions. With its rigorous analysis of what works and what doesn’t, What Works for Workers points the way toward effective reform. For social scientists, policymakers, and activists grappling with the practical realities of low-wage work, this book provides a valuable guide for narrowing the gap separating rich and poor.

STEPHANIE LUCE is associate professor of labor studies at the Murphy Institute, CUNY School for Professional Studies.

JENNIFER LUFF is lecturer in the department of history, Durham University, U.K.

JOSEPH A. McCARTIN is professor of history at Georgetown University.

RUTH MILKMAN is professor of sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center.

CONTRIBUTORS: Eileen Appelbaum, Peter B. Edelman, Richard B. Freeman, Jennifer Gordon, Sarah Hamersma, Harry J. Holzer, Stephanie Luce, Jennifer Luff, Joseph McCartin, Ruth Milkman, Alice O’Connor, John Schmitt, Paul Osterman, David Weil, Jeffrey B. Wenger

“Erica Foldy and Tamara Buckley offer us an extraordinary book designed to explore what is, and push the conversation about race and organizational life forward. The Color Bind is a strong synthesis of theory, research, and analytic reflections on organizational practice. Their ‘case’ is a provocative example of an institution under enormous pressure to ‘not screw up’ made particularly salient in times of high surveillance, risk analyses, and social anxiety—precisely the conditions under which racial stereotypes flare and are circulated in the popular unconscious.”

—MICHELLE FINE, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, CUNY Graduate Center

“The Color Bind will help people in organizations and institutions break the unbearable silence about race and culture. It tackles the basic belief that silence about race makes it less present, but, as the authors eloquently argue, we end up in a color bind. The growth experience of the teams in this book illustrates how, with courage, we can build understanding and trust across race and culture.”

—STELLA NKOMO, professor of human resource management, University of Pretoria

Since the 1960s, the dominant model for fostering diversity and inclusion in the United States has been the “color blind” approach, which emphasizes similarity and assimilation and insists that people should be understood as individuals, not as members of racial or cultural groups. This approach is especially prevalent in the workplace, where discussions about race and ethnicity are considered taboo. Yet, as widespread as “color blindness” has become, many studies show that the practice has damaging repercussions, including reinforcing the existing racial hierarchy by ignoring the significance of racism and discrimination. In The Color Bind, workplace experts Erica Foldy and Tamara Buckley investigate race relations in office settings, looking at how both color blindness and what they call “color cognizance” have profound effects on the ways coworkers think and interact with each other.

Based on an intensive two-and-a-half-year study of employees at a child welfare agency, The Color Bind shows how color cognizance—the practice of recognizing the profound impact of race and ethnicity on life experiences while affirming the importance of racial diversity—can help workers move beyond silence on the issue of race toward more inclusive workplace practices. Drawing from existing psychological and sociological research that demonstrates the success of color-cognizant approaches in dyads, workgroups and organizations, Foldy and Buckley analyzed the behavior of work teams within a child protection agency. The behaviors of three teams in particular reveal the factors that enable color cognizance to flourish. While two of the teams largely avoided explicitly discussing race, one group, “Team North,” openly talked about race and ethnicity in team meetings. By acknowledging these differences when discussing how to work with their clients and with each other, the members of Team North were able to dig into challenges related to race and culture instead of avoiding them. The key to achieving color cognizance within the group was twofold: It required both the presence of at least a few members who were already color cognizant, as well as an environment in which all team members felt relatively safe and behaved in ways that strengthened learning, including productively resolving conflict and reflecting on their practice.

The Color Bind provides a useful lens for policy makers, researchers and practitioners pursuing in a wide variety of goals, from addressing racial disparities in health and education to creating diverse and inclusive organizations to providing culturally competent services to clients and customers. By foregrounding open conversations about race and ethnicity, Foldy and Buckley show that institutions can transcend the color bind in order to better acknowledge and reflect the diverse populations they serve.

ERICA GABRIELLE FOLDY is associate professor of public and nonprofit management at New York University.

TAMARA R. BUCKLEY is associate professor of counseling at Hunter College and psychology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.