“The Biological Consequences of Socioeconomic Inequalities is a very timely book by an interdisciplinary group of experts that presents compelling new information about the neurobiological and systemic health consequences of socioeconomic inequalities, and it discusses some encouraging approaches for intervention using biomarkers for assessment. The emphasis on biomarkers is particularly important for demonstrating how the social environment of inequality ‘gets under the skin’ and presents both a challenge and an opportunity for this important field.”
—Bruce S. McEwen, The Rockefeller University

“The usual paradigm is to consider that socioeconomic status, environmental and genetic factors all affect a person’s health, but this book broadens that paradigm by examining also how socioeconomic and environmental factors directly affect the expression of genes and specific biological processes that themselves affect health and disease. In short, while others have shown that income affects health and health affects income, The Biological Consequences of Socioeconomic Inequalities examines the mechanisms through which income affects biological processes that affect health and cognition. This interdisciplinary book provides essential reading for researchers in the social and biological sciences interested in the income-health gradient, lays a useful foundation for the new field of individually customized medicine, and improves our understanding of how behaviors, stress, and cognitive-emotional processes lead to variation in biological functioning and disease.”
—Randall P. Ellis, Boston University, and past president, American Society of Health Economist

Social scientists have repeatedly uncovered a disturbing feature of economic inequality: people with larger incomes and better education tend to lead longer, healthier lives. This pattern holds across all ages and for virtually all measures of health, apparently indicating a biological dimension of inequality. But scholars have only begun to understand the complex mechanisms that drive this disparity. How exactly do financial well-being and human physiology interact? The Biological Consequences of Socioeconomic Inequalities incorporates insights from the social and biological sciences to quantify the biology of disadvantage and to assess how poverty gets under the skin to impact health.

Drawing from unusually rich datasets of biomarkers, brain scans, and socioeconomic measures, Biological Consequences of Socioeconomic Inequalities illustrates exciting new paths to understanding social inequalities in health. Barbara Wolfe, William N. Evans and Nancy Adler begin the volume with a critical evaluation of the literature on income and health, providing a lucid review of the difficulties of establishing clear causal pathways between the two variables. In their chapter, Arun S. Karlamangla, Tara L. Gruenewald, and Teresa E. Seeman outline the potential of biomarkers—such as cholesterol, heart pressure, and C-reactive protein—to assess and indicate the factors underlying health. Edith Chen, Hannah M. C. Schreier, and Meanne Chan reveal the empirical power of biomarkers by examining asthma, a condition steeply correlated with socioeconomic status. Their analysis shows how stress at the individual, family, and neighborhood levels can increase the incidence of asthma. The volume then turns to cognitive neuroscience, using biomarkers in a new way to examine the impact of poverty on brain development. Jamie Hanson, Nicole Hair, Amitabh Chandra, Ed Moss, Jay Bhattacharya, Seth D. Pollack, and Barbara Wolfe use a longitudinal Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) study of children between the ages of four and eighteen to study the link between poverty and limited cognition among children. Michelle C. Carlson, Christopher L. Seplaki, and Teresa E. Seeman also focus on brain development to examine the role of socioeconomic status in cognitive decline among older adults.

Featuring insights from the biological and social sciences, Biological Consequences of Socioeconomic Inequalities will be an essential resource for scholars interested in socioeconomic disparities and the biological imprint that material deprivation leaves on the human body.

BARBARA WOLFE is professor of public affairs, economics, and population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

WILLIAM N. EVANS is Keough-Hesburge Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the University of Notre Dame.

TERESA E. SEEMAN is professor of medicine and epidemiology in the school of public health at the University of California, Los Angeles.

CONTRIBUTORS: Nancy Adler, Jay Bhattacharya, Michelle C. Carlson, Meanne Chan, Amitabh Chandra, Edith Chen, William H. Dow, William Evans, Elliot Friedman, Tara L. Gruenewald, Daniel A. Hackman, Nicole Hair, Jamie Hanson, Arun S. Karlamangla, Catarine Kiefe, Ed Moss, Seth D. Pollak, David H. Rehkopf, Hannah M. C. Schreier, Teresa E. Seeman, Christopher L. Seplaki, Barbara Wolfe

Winner of the 2013 C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems

Winner of the 2014 Book Award from the Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section of the American Sociological Association

Runner Up, 2014 Academy of Management's George R. Terry Book Award

“Nancy DiTomaso seriously challenges the framing of racial issues in the United States. Informed by interviews with non-Hispanic whites from three areas of the country, she not only convincingly reveals how racial inequality can be maintained and perpetuated without racism, but also how most whites absolve themselves of guilt feelings about race. The American Non-Dilemma is replete with new insights on a historic domestic problem.”
—WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, Harvard University

“Scholars in the humanities are expert at analyzing absences—the pause in the music’s beat, the white space in the painting, the protagonist’s missing child in the novel. But social scientists are generally very poor at analyzing nonevents. In The American Non-
Dilemma, Nancy DiTomaso expertly reveals what Americans do not say, because of what they do not see. Whites’ inability to perceive the benefits of racial privilege, even in the context of economic struggles, helps us to understand how racial hierarchy persists in a nation committed to equal opportunity.”
—JENNIFER HOCHSCHILD, Harvard University

The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s seemed to mark a historical turning point in advancing the American dream of equal opportunity for all citizens, regardless of race. Yet 50 years on, racial inequality remains a troubling fact of life in American society and its causes are highly contested. In The American Non-Dilemma, sociologist Nancy DiTomaso convincingly argues that America's enduring racial divide is sustained more by whites' preferential treatment of members of their own social networks than by overt racial discrimination. Drawing on research from sociology, political science, history, and psychology, as well as her own interviews with a cross-section of non-Hispanic whites, DiTomaso 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.

Taking Gunnar Myrdal's classic work on America's racial divide, The American Dilemma, as her departure point, DiTomaso focuses on "the white side of the race line." To do so, she interviewed a sample of working, middle, and upper-class whites about their life histories, political views, and general outlook on racial inequality in America. While the vast majority of whites profess strong support for civil rights and equal opportunity regardless of race, they continue to pursue their own group-based advantage, especially in the labor market where whites tend to favor other whites in securing jobs protected from market competition. This "opportunity hoarding" leads to substantially improved life outcomes for whites due to their greater access to social resources from family, schools, churches, and other institutions with which they are engaged.

DiTomaso also examines how whites understand the persistence of racial inequality in a society where whites are, on average, the advantaged racial group. Most whites see themselves as part of the solution rather than part of the problem with regard to racial inequality. Yet they continue to harbor strong reservations about public policies—such as affirmative action—intended to ameliorate racial inequality. In effect, they accept the principles of civil rights but not the implementation of policies that would bring about greater racial equality. DiTomaso shows that the political engagement of different groups of whites is affected by their views of how civil rights policies impact their ability to provide advantages to family and friends. This tension between civil and labor rights is evident in Republicans' use of anti-civil rights platforms to attract white voters, and in the efforts of Democrats to bridge race and class issues, or civil and labor rights broadly defined. As a result, DiTomaso finds that whites are, at best, uncertain allies in the fight for racial equality.

Weaving together research on both race and class, along with the life experiences of DiTomaso's interview subjects, The American Non-Dilemma provides a compelling exploration of how racial inequality is reproduced in today's society, how people come to terms with the issue in their day-to-day experiences, and what these trends may signify in the contemporary political landscape.

NANCY DITOMASO is professor of organization management at Rutgers University.

“Documenting Desegregation uses remarkable data to chart the history of workplace integration since 1966, showing where, when, and hence why firms changed. The lessons are many: black men’s gains stalled when Reagan took the White House; white women saw progress until the new millennium; affirmative action played a positive role. This meticulously researched, compelling book provides not only a much needed history of the revolution in the labor market, but important lessons for how the United States can continue to pursue equality of opportunity.”
—Frank Dobbin, Harvard University

“With comprehensive data on private-sector employers, this book reveals the changing narratives of inequality by race and gender in American society from the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through 2005. The Civil Rights Act ended hypersegregation by race and sex, but employment progress for African American men and women has largely stalled since 1980. White women have continued to see gains over the period, but the employment advantages of white men have persisted and taken on new forms in the modern workplace. The sweeping patterns of racial and gender inequality that marked the beginning of the Civil Rights era have been replaced by workplace-level inequality regimes that are shaped by labor-market, legal, political, and normative environments. Documenting Desegregation is a landmark contribution to our understanding of the shifting character of inequality in American society.”
—Robert L. Nelson, Northwestern University

Enacted nearly fifty years ago, the Civil Rights Act codified a new vision for American society by formally ending segregation and banning race and gender discrimination in the workplace. But how much change did the legislation actually produce? As employers responded to the law, did new and more subtle forms of inequality emerge in the workplace? In an insightful analysis that combines history with a rigorous empirical analysis of newly available data, Documenting Desegregation offers the most comprehensive account to date of what has happened to equal opportunity in America—and what needs to be done in order to achieve a truly integrated workforce.

Weaving strands of history, cognitive psychology, and demography, Documenting Desgregation provides a compelling exploration of the ways legislation can affect employer behavior and produce change. Authors Kevin Stainback and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey use a remarkable historical record—data from more than six million workplaces collected by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) since 1966—to present a sobering portrait of race and gender in the American workplace. Progress has been decidedly uneven: black men, black women, and white women have prospered in firms that rely on educational credentials when hiring, though white women have advanced more quickly. And white men have hardly fallen behind—they now hold more managerial positions than they did in 1964. The authors argue that the Civil Rights Act's equal opportunity clauses have been most effective when accompanied by social movements demanding changes. EEOC data show that African American men made rapid gains in the 1960s at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Similarly, white women gained access to more professional and managerial jobs in the 1970s as regulators and policymakers began to enact and enforce gender discrimination laws. By the 1980s, however, racial desegregation had stalled, reflecting the dimmed status of the Civil Rights agenda. Racial and gender employment segregation remain high today, and, alarmingly, many firms, particularly in high-wage industries, seem to be moving in the wrong direction and have shown signs of resegregating since the 1980s. To counter this worrying trend, the authors propose new methods to increase diversity by changing industry norms, holding human resources managers to account, and exerting renewed government pressure on large corporations to make equal employment opportunity a national priority.

At a time of high unemployment and rising inequality, Documenting Desegregation provides an incisive re-examination of America's tortured pursuit of equal employment opportunity. This important new book will be an indispensable guide for those seeking to understand where America stands in fulfilling its promise of a workplace free from discrimination.

KEVIN STAINBACK is assistant professor of sociology at Purdue University.

DONALD TOMASKOVIC-DEVEY is professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“Nancy Folbre and her colleagues have crafted an integrated, far-ranging, and incisive analysis of the contours, meaning, and possible solutions to the mounting care work crisis. A group of stellar contributors offers a treasure trove of information and ideas about how to define, measure, and value care work in all its myriad and often hidden forms. It is an understatement to say that For Love and Money is essential for anyone who cares about care work. Even more, any serious effort to address the care vacuum facing market societies should begin with this book.”
—Kathleen Gerson, New York University

“For Love and Money is a rich and innovative examination of the broad care landscape, including both paid and unpaid care, in the United States. The authors look at care work in depth and in breadth—from child care to care of people with disabilities and frail older adults. They draw a picture of care work as an activity in which all participate and all benefit. This inclusive perspective should inform public policy in the future.”
—Carol Levine, United Hospital Fund

“Based on a successful interdisciplinary effort, For Love and Money synthesizes and then moves well beyond—both theoretically and empirically—earlier analyses of care work. Rejecting the conventional frame that separates love and money, the authors insist on and convey the connections and similarities between paid and unpaid care. Making giant steps towards delineating a new paradigm, the book intelligently considers issues of definition, measurement, motive, amount, form, and value of care work as well as clearly lays out the inadequacies of current policies that address it. The authors show the ways care work is shaped by gender inequality and make a convincing case that gender equality depends on improved care provision. Wide-ranging yet careful, For Love and Money should become a key resource for scholars, activists, and policymakers concerned with helping Americans of all ages get the care we need.”
—Naomi Gerstel, University of Massachusetts Amherst

As women moved into the formal labor force in large numbers over the last forty years, care work – traditionally provided primarily by women – has increasingly shifted from the family arena to the market. Child care, elder care, care for the disabled, and home care now account for a growing segment of low-wage work in the United States, and demand for such work will only increase as the baby boom generation ages. But the expanding market provision of care has created new economic anxieties and raised pointed questions: Why do women continue to do most care work, both paid and unpaid? Why does care work remain low paid when the quality of care is so highly valued? How effective and equitable are public policies toward dependents in the United States? In For Love and Money, an interdisciplinary team of experts explores the theoretical dilemmas of care provision and provides an unprecedented empirical overview of the looming problems for the care sector in the United States.

Drawing on diverse disciplines and areas of expertise, For Love and Money develops an innovative framework to analyze existing care policies and suggest potential directions for care policy and future research. Contributors Paula England, Nancy Folbre, and Carrie Leana explore the range of motivations for caregiving, such as familial responsibility or limited job prospects, and why both love and money can be efficient motivators. They also examine why women tend to specialize in the provision of care, citing factors like job discrimination, social pressure, or the personal motivation to provide care reported by many women. Suzanne Bianchi, Nancy Folbre, and Douglas Wolf estimate how much unpaid care is being provided in the United States and show that low-income families rely more on unpaid family members for their child and for elder care than do affluent families. With low wages and little savings, these families often find it difficult to provide care and earn enough money to stay afloat. Candace Howes, Carrie Leana and Kristin Smith investigate the dynamics within the paid care sector and find problematic wages and working conditions, including high turnover, inadequate training and a “pay penalty” for workers who enter care jobs. These conditions have consequences: poor job quality in child care and adult care also leads to poor care quality. In their chapters, Janet Gornick, Candace Howes and Laura Braslow provide a systematic inventory of public policies that directly shape the provision of care for children or for adults who need personal assistance, such as family leave, child care tax credits and Medicaid-funded long-term care. They conclude that income and variations in states’ policies are the greatest factors determining how well, and for whom, the current system works. Despite the demand for care work, very little public policy attention has been devoted to it. Only three states, for example, have enacted paid family leave programs.

Paid or unpaid, care costs those who provide it. At the heart of For Love and Money is the understanding that the quality of care work in the United States matters not only for those who receive care but also for society at large, which benefits from the nurturance and maintenance of human capabilities. As care work gravitates from the family to the formal economy, this volume clarifies the pressing need for America to fundamentally rethink its care policies and increase public investment in this increasingly crucial sector.

NANCY FOLBRE is professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

“Europe has joined North America as a region of immigration and cities such as such as Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Stockholm, and Vienna have become major immigrant gateways, along with traditional gateways such as New York and Los Angeles. The Changing Face of World Cities offers the first truly comparative analysis of patterns and processes of assimilation and integration in Europe and the United States. In a model of collaborative scholarship, the multinational team assembled by Maurice Crul and John Mollenkopf use comparable methods and data to shed analytic light on the barriers and bridges that immigrants and their children face in different national settings. It is essential reading for students of immigration on both sides of the Atlantic.”
—Douglas S. Massey, Princeton University

“The Changing Face of World Cities offers new, comparative vistas on immigrant integration around the Atlantic. It challenges the widely-held assumption that American society is more open toward the young adult children of immigrants than Europe and shows how the varied approaches on the European continent lead to different trajectories of immigrant integration. It should provoke deeper and more informed policy discussions on both sides of the Atlantic.”
—Andreas Wimmer, UCLA

“Maurice Crul and John Mollenkopf have produced the first systematic, in-depth comparative analysis of the effects of global migration in Europe and the United States. It will be essential reading for all immigration scholars. Moreover, anyone who cares about the future of either Europe or the United States must read this book.”
—Alex Stepick, Florida International University

A seismic population shift is taking place as many formerly racially homogeneous cities in the West attract a diverse influx of newcomers seeking economic and social advancement. In The Changing Face of World Cities, a distinguished group of immigration experts presents the first systematic, data-based comparison of the lives of young adult children of immigrants growing up in seventeen big cities of Western Europe and the United States. Drawing on a comprehensive set of surveys, this important book brings together new evidence about the international immigrant experience and provides far-reaching lessons for devising more effective public policies.

The Changing Face of World Cities pairs European and American researchers to explore how youths of immigrant origin negotiate educational systems, labor markets, gender, neighborhoods, citizenship, and identity on both sides of the Atlantic. Maurice Crul and his co-authors compare the educational trajectories of second-generation Mexicans in Los Angeles with second-generation Turks in Western European cities. In the United States, uneven school quality in disadvantaged immigrant neighborhoods and the high cost of college are the main barriers to educational advancement, while in some European countries, rigid early selection sorts many students off the college track and into dead-end jobs. Liza Reisel, Laurence Lessard-Phillips, and Phil Kasinitz find that while more young members of the second generation are employed in the United States than in Europe, they are also likely to hold low-paying jobs that barely life them out of poverty. In Europe, where immigrant youth suffer from higher unemployment, the embattled European welfare system still yields them a higher standard of living than many of their American counterparts. Turning to issues of identity and belonging, Jens Schneider, Leo Chávez, Louis DeSipio, and Mary Waters find that it is far easier for the children of Dominican or Mexican immigrants to identify as American, in part because the United States takes hyphenated identities for granted. In Europe, religious bias against Islam makes it hard for young people of Turkish origin to identify strongly as German, French, or Swedish. Editors Maurice Crul and John Mollenkopf conclude that despite the barriers these youngsters encounter on both continents, they are making real progress relative to their parents and are beginning to close the gap with the native-born.

The Changing Face of World Cities goes well beyong existing immigration literature focused on the U.S. experience to show that national policies on each side of the Atlantic can be enriched by lessons from the other. The Changing Face of World Cities will be vital reading for anyone interested in the young people who will shape the future of our increasingly interconnected global economy.

MAURICE CRUL is professor of sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

JOHN MOLLENKOPF is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology, and director, Center for Urban Research, at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

CONTRIBUTORS: Richard Alba, Susan K. Brown, Leo Chavez, Louis DeSipio, Rosita Fibbi, Nancy Foner, Barbara Herzog-Punzenberger, Philip Kasinitz, Elif Keskiner, Jennifer Lee, Laurence Lessard-Phillips, Leo Lucassen, Liza Reisel, Jeffrey G. Reitz, Jens Schneider, Philipp Schnell, Patrick Simon, Thomas Soehl, Van C. Tran, Constanza Vera-Larrucea, Mary Waters, Min Zhou.