While the 14th amendment to the U.S. constitution guarantees all citizens “equal treatment under the law,” subtle forms of unequal treatment remain prevalent in American life. A landmark 2002 report by the Institute of Medicine showed that racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care are significant, with black and Hispanic Americans receiving a lower quality of health care than their white counterparts. This translates into higher mortality rates among minority patients.
Group disparities in healthcare are well established. Economic and cultural differences, including patients’ lack of knowledge of Western medical practice and doctors’ lack of understanding of patients’ diverse cultures, have an effect on healthcare and health outcomes for patients. Although studies of these issues among larger minority groups in the United States are common, there have been few efforts to document this phenomenon among smaller cultural groups.
Immigrants to the United States arrive much healthier than their native-born peers. The longer immigrants stay in the United States, however, the more likely their health outcomes are to worsen and align with the native-born. This pattern is referred to as the Immigrant Health Paradox. With an award from the Foundation, sociologists Ida Rousseau Mukenge, Tshilemalema Mukenge, and Obie Clayton will investigate whether the same paradox holds true for African immigrants.
With the increasing intercultural contacts of everyday life, people must make sense of each other both as individuals and as groups. How do people categorize individuals and groups that differ from themselves? According to Susan Fiske’s Stereotype Content Model (SCM), members of other groups are identified along two universal axes – perceived warmth and perceived competence – that differ in the kinds of prejudice they evoke.
Has the U.S. Army created a positive racial climate within its ranks? How much have race relations in the military really progressed? James Burk of Texas A&M University will survey recent literature on the Army’s approach to race relations to identify hypotheses for future research. This project is a parallel to the review of Army databases and literature conducted with Russell Sage Foundation support by Jason Dempsey and Isaiah Wilson, with whom Burk will closely collaborate.
Who gets stuck in low-wage jobs and who advances to higher paying jobs? How have tighter labor markets and the welfare-to-work legislation affected low-wage workers? Eight years ago, Katherine Newman of Harvard University conducted a study of fast-food workers in Harlem and reported the results in her book No Shame in My Game. In a follow-up study in 1997, she found that one-third of her interviewees had experienced wage gains of more than $5 per hour; another third was stagnant; and the remaining third was worse off.
In 1998 and 1999, the Foundation issued an open-ended request for proposals to conduct case studies of low-wage jobs in the United States. The twelve best proposals were funded, yielding rich studies of 25 industries that employ workers at low pay. Yet none of these studies covered work in the retail sector, where 14% of the labor force is employed, many of them at low wages.
In a New York Times survey that followed the 2000 Census, four out of ten people who listed multiple races on the Census later changed their self categorization. Kenneth Prewitt, the Director of the 2000 U.S.