"A breathtaking expose of how humans are fine-tuned for creating categorical inequali ties of class, race, and gender and how markets and other institutions can be fashioned to exploit this human capacity in especially devilish ways. At once a general treatise on inequality and a historical treatise on the recent takeoff in inequality, Categorically Unequal combines the analytic smarts of a Robert Hauser with the muckraking sensibility of a C. Wright Mills and the synthetic reach of a Talcott Parsons. The long wait is over: We now have the sociological response to narrowly-drawn economistic accounts of poverty and inequality."
-DAVID B. GRUSKY, Stanford University

"Douglas S. Massey documents how divided Americans are and how we got this way. He blends theory and data to explain why U.S. race, class, and gender inequalities run so deep. After acknowledging how human nature prompts us to differentiate one group from another, Massey directs our attention to why American inequalities exceed those of other rich nations. The most novel finding in Categorically Unequal is that progress on one front often goes with losses on the others. The era of egalitarian capitalism (1933-1974) tamed class inequalities but tolerated exclusion of women and African Americans. Women's gains in the last thirty years have exacerbated resurgent class dif ferences. Anyone who worries about the persistence of poverty and discrimination should read this book."
-MICHAEL HOUT, University of California, Berkeley

The United States holds the dubious distinction of having the most unequal income distribution of any advanced industrialized nation. While other developed countries face similar challenges from globalization and technological change, none rivals America’s singularly poor record for equitably distributing the benefits and burdens of recent economic shifts. In Categorically Unequal, Douglas Massey weaves together history, political economy, and even neuropsychology to provide a comprehensive explanation of how America’s culture and political system perpetuates inequalities between different segments of the population.

Categorically Unequal is striking both for its theoretical originality and for the breadth of topics it covers. Massey argues that social inequalities arise from the universal human tendency to place others into social categories. In America, ethnic minorities, women, and the poor have consistently been the targets of stereotyping, and as a result, they have been exploited and discriminated against throughout the nation’s history. African-Americans continue to face discrimination in markets for jobs, housing, and credit. Meanwhile, the militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border has discouraged Mexican migrants from leaving the United States, creating a pool of exploitable workers who lack the legal rights of citizens. Massey also shows that women’s advances in the labor market have been concentrated among the affluent and well-educated, while low-skilled female workers have been relegated to occupations that offer few chances for earnings mobility. At the same time, as the wages of low-income men have fallen, more working-class women are remaining unmarried and raising children on their own. Even as minorities and women continue to face these obstacles, the progressive legacy of the New Deal has come under frontal assault. The government has passed anti-union legislation, made taxes more regressive, allowed the real value of the federal minimum wage to decline, and drastically cut social welfare spending. As a result, the income gap between the richest and poorest has dramatically widened since 1980. Massey attributes these anti-poor policies in part to the increasing segregation of neighborhoods by income, which has insulated the affluent from the social consequences of poverty, and to the disenfranchisement of the poor, as the population of immigrants, prisoners, and ex-felons swells.

America’s unrivaled disparities are not simply the inevitable result of globalization and technological change. As Massey shows, privileged groups have systematically exploited and excluded many of their fellow Americans. By delving into the root causes of inequality in America, Categorically Unequal provides a compelling argument for the creation of a more equitable society.

DOUGLAS S. MASSEY is the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University.

A Volume in the the Russell Sage Foundation's Centennial Series

"Steady Gains and Stalled Progress is an important collection and a worthy successor to Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips' classic The Black-White Test-Score Gap. It offers new evidence that highlights the complexities of racial inequality and provides a basis for cautious optimism for the future."
-ADAM GAMORAN, professor of sociology and educational policy studies and director, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin, Madison

"The black-white gap in test scores is one of the most stubborn and mystifying challenges facing the United States. And while it is hard to separate fact from statistical artifact and personal belief, Katherine Magnuson and Jane Waldfogel have produced a thorough and insightful volume that accomplishes just that. Even experts in education policy will come away having learned something new."
-CECILIA E. ROUSE, Theodore A. Wells '29 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University

"Few trends have tested the optimism of the Civil Rights era more than the stubborn persistence of the black-white achievement gap. Steady Gains and Stalled Progress assembles a major league team of social scientists to examine possible explanations for the puzzling career of this gap. Their penetrating analysis will be essential reading for anyone interested in education, social equity, or the future of the American workforce."
-CHARLES T. CLOTFELTER, professor of public policy studies, economics, and law, Duke University

Addressing the disparity in test scores between black and white children remains one of the greatest social challenges of our time. Between the 1960s and 1980s, tremendous strides were made in closing the achievement gap, but that remarkable progress halted abruptly in the mid 1980s, and stagnated throughout the 1990s. How can we understand these shifting trends and their relation to escalating economic inequality? In Steady Gains and Stalled Progress, interdisciplinary experts present a groundbreaking analysis of the multifaceted reasons behind the test score gap—and the policies that hold the greatest promise for renewed progress in the future.

Steady Gains and Stalled Progress shows that while income inequality does not directly lead to racial differences in test scores, it creates and exacerbates disparities in schools, families, and communities—which do affect test scores. Jens Ludwig and Jacob Vigdor demonstrate that the period of greatest progress in closing the gap coincided with the historic push for school desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s. Stagnation came after efforts to integrate schools slowed down. Today, the test score gap is nearly 50 percent larger in states with the highest levels of school segregation.  Katherine Magnuson, Dan Rosenbaum, and Jane Waldfogel show how parents’ level of education affects children’s academic performance: as educational attainment for black parents increased in the 1970s and 1980s, the gap in children’s test scores narrowed. Sean Corcoran and William Evans present evidence that teachers of black students have less experience and are less satisfied in their careers than teachers of white students. David Grissmer and Elizabeth Eiseman find that the effects of economic deprivation on cognitive and emotional development in early childhood lead to a racial divide in school readiness on the very first day of kindergarten. Looking ahead, Helen Ladd stresses that the task of narrowing the divide is not one that can or should be left to schools alone. Progress will resume only when policymakers address the larger social and economic forces behind the problem. Ronald Ferguson masterfully interweaves the volume’s chief findings to highlight the fact that the achievement gap is the cumulative effect of many different processes operating in different contexts.

The gap in black and white test scores is one of the most salient features of racial inequality today. Steady Gains and Stalled Progress provides the detailed information and powerful insight we need to understand a complicated past and design a better future.

KATHERINE MAGNUSON is assistant professor of social work and a faculty affiliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

JANE WALDFOGEL is professor of social work and public affairs at Columbia University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Mark Berends, Mary E. Campbell, Sean P. Corcoran, Elizabeth Eiseman, William N. Evans, Ronald F. Ferguson,  David Grissmer,  Robert Haveman,  Helen F. Ladd,  Jens Ludwig, Roberto V. Penaloza,  Meredith Phillips,  Dan T. Rosenbaum,  Jacob L. Vigdor, Tina Wildhagen, Barbara L. Wolfe.

An Institute for Research on Poverty Affiliated Book on Poverty and Public Policy

Stewart Macaulay teaches contracts at the University of Wisconsin Law School and is interested in the part the legal system plays in implementing, regulating, and hindering economic relationships, and how it does these things. This book is a descriptive analysis of organizational change that has resulted from automobile dealers' attempts to find a legal remedy for what they consider unfair practices of the manufacturers. It advances our understanding of the limitations and the positive functions of formal rules in the regulation of human conduct, and shows how informal procedures can develop as a result of pressure for changes in the formal rules.

STEWART MACAULAY teaches contracts at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

This comprehensive work—relevant to the major issue of the relation of social knowledge to political power—argues for strengthening the role of the social sciences in the federal government. It calls for a central organization for the social sciences and for better integration of research within the federal agencies. It underscores the various factors that might help to bring about this goal.

GENE M. LYONS is professor of government at Dartmouth College.
 

The reach of the social and behavioral sciences is currently so broad and interdisciplinary that staying abreast of developments has become a daunting task. The thirty papers that constitute Leading Edges in Social and Behavioral Science provide a unique composite picture of recent findings and promising new research opportunities within most areas of social and behavioral research. Prepared by expert scholars under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, these timely and well-documented reports define research priorities for an impressive range of topics:

Part I: Mind and Brain

Part II: Behavior in Social Context

Part III: Choice and Allocation

Part IV: Evolving Institutions

Part V: Societies and International Orders

Part VI: Data and Analysis

R. DUNCAN LUCE is Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and director of the Irvine Research Center in Mathematic Behavioral Science at the University of California, Irvine.

NEIL J. SMELSER is University Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

DEAN R. GERSTEIN is study director at the National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences.

CONTRIBUTORS: Norma Graham, Linda Bartosik, Albert S. Bregman, Julian Hichberg, Azriel Rosenfeld, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, R. Duncan Luce, Richard Thompson, Carol Barnes, Thomas Carew, Lon Cooper, Michela Gallagher, Michael Posner, Robert Rescola, Daniel Schachter, Larry Squire, Alan Wagner, Saul Steinebers, Fergus I.M. Clark, John Jonedes, Walter Kinsch, Stephen M. Kosslyn, James L. McClelland, Raymond S. Nickerson, James Greeno, Frederick J. Newmeyer, Antonio R. Damasio, Merrill Garrett, Mark Lieberman, David Lightfoot, Howard Poizner, Thomas Roeper, Eleanor Saffran, Ivan Sag, Victoria Fromkin, Herbert Pick, Ann L. Brown, Carol Dweck, Robert Emde, Frank Keil, David Klahr, Ross S. Parke, Steven Pinker, Rochel Gelman, David S. Krantz, Leonard Epstein, Norman Garmezy, Marcha Ory, Leonard Perlin, Judith Rodin, Marvin Stein, John F. Kihlstrom, Ellen Berscheid, John Darley, Reid Hastie, Harold Kelley, Sheldon Stryker, Edward E. Jones, Nancy M,. Henley, Rose Laub Cosner, Jane Flax, Naomi Quinn, Kathryn Rish Sklar, Sherry B. Ortner, Alfred Blumstein, Richard Berk, Philip Cook, David Farrington, Samuel Krislov, Albert J. Reiss Jr., Franklin Zimring, William Riker, James S. Coleman, Bernard Grofman, Michael Hechter, John Ledyard, Charles Plott, Kenneth Shepsle, John Ferejohn,  Mark Machina, Robin Hogarth, Kenneth MacCrimmon, John Roberts, Alvin Roth, Paul Slovic, Rihard Thaler, Oliver Williamson, Jerry Hausman, Paul Joskow, Roger Noll, Vernon Smith, David Wise, Stanley Reiter, Kenneth Arrow, Lance Davis, Paul Dimaggio, Mark Granovetter, Jerry Green, Theodore Groves, Michael Hannan, Andrew Postlewaite, Roy Radner, Karl Shell, Leonid Hurwicz, Frank Stafford, Jamoes Baron, Danier Hamermesh, Christopher Jencks, Ross Stolzenberg, Donald J. Treiman, Stanley Fischer, William Beeman, Rudiger Dornbusch, Thomas Sargent, Robert Schiller, Lawrence Summers, Glynn Isaac, Robert Blumenschine, Margaret Conkey, Terry Deacon, Irven Devore, Peter Ellison, Richard Milton, David Pilbeam, Richard Potts, Kathy Schick, Margaret Schoeninger, Andrew Sillen, John Speth, Nicholas Toth, Sherwood Washburn, Douglas C. North, Robert Bates, Robert Brenner, Elizabeth Colson, Kent Flannery, Vernon Smith, Neil Smelser, Samuel Preson, Ansley Coale, Kingsley Davis, Geoffrey McNicoll, Jane Menken, T. Paul Schultz, Daniel Vining, John Modell, Margaret Clark, William Goode, William Kessen, Robert Willis, John Quigley, Alex Anas, Geoffrey Hewings, Risa Palm, James Fernandez, Keith Basso, Karen Blu, Kenneth Boulding, Stepher Gudeman, Michael Kearney, Goerge Marcus, Dennis McGilvary, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, William Sewell, Daniel H. Levine, Leonard Binder, Thomas Bruneau, Jean Comaroff, Susan Harding, Charles Keyes, Robert Wuthnow, Dorothy Nelkin, Charles Rosenberg, Theda Skocpol, Martin Bulmer, Thomas Joster, Donald McCloskey, Arnold Thackeray, Carol Weiss, Peter Evans, Bruce Cumings, Albert Fishlow, Peter Gourevitch, John Meyer, Alejandro Portes, Barbara Stallings, Robert Jervis, Josh Lederberg, Robert North, Steven Rosen, Dina Zinnes, Warren Miller, Martin David, James Davis, Bruce Russett, Kimball Romney, Norman Bradburn, J. Douglas Carol. Roy D'Andrade, Jean Claude Falmagne, Paul Holland, Lawrence Hubert, Edward E. Leamer, John W. Pratt, Cliffors C. Clogg, Bert F. Green, Michael Hannan, Jerry A. Hausman, William H. Kruskal, Donald B. Rubin, I. Richard Savaga, John W. Turkey, Kenneth W. Wachter, Leo A. Goodman.

"How to inform the judicial mind," Justice Frankfurter remarked during the school desegregation cases, "is one of the most complicated problems." Social research is a potential source of such information. Indeed, in the 1960s and 1970s, with activist courts at the forefront of social reform, the field of law and social science came of age. But for all the recent activity and scholarship in this area, few books have attempted to create an intellectual framework, a systematic introduction to applied social-legal research.

Social Research in the Judicial Process addresses this need for a broader picture. Designed for use by both law students and social science students, it constructs a conceptual bridge between social research (the realm of social facts) and judicial decision making (the realm of social values). Its unique casebook format weaves together judicial opinions, empirical studies, and original text. It is a process-oriented book that teaches skills and perspectives, cultivating an informed sensitivity to the use and misuse of psychology, social psychology, and sociology in apellate and trial adjudication. Among the social-legal topics explored are school desegregation, capital punishment, jury impartiality, and eyewitness identification.

This casebook is remarkable for its scope, its accessibility, and the intelligence of its conceptual integration. It provides the kind of interdisciplinary teaching framework that should eventually help lawyers to make knowledgeable use of social research, and social scientists to conduct useful research within a legally sophisticated context.

WALLACE D. LOH is professor of law and adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Washington.

"Time and Decision is astonishing in its breadth and depth of coverage. It is more than a state-of-the art survey-it actually moves the frontier of research. It will be indispensable and invaluable to anyone working on theoretical or applied issues of intertemporal choice."
-Jon Elster, Robert K. Merton Professor of Social Science, Columbia University

"The psychological study of intertemporal decisions is beginning to have a major impact on economics. This collection of exciting articles on the psychology and economics of time preferences will deepen this impact by spurring new modeling attempts and empirical research."
-Ernst Fehr, director of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zürich

"This remarkable collection breaks new ground by drawing on an extraordinary range of expert social and biological scientists to show how theories of choosing over time have evolved dramatically from the simple exponential discounting model. These new ideas promise to contribute to the solution of devastating social problems of addiction, savings, and self-control."
-Colin Camerer, Rea A. and Lela G. Axline Professor of Business Economics, California Institute of Technology

"A superb interdisciplinary collection on one of the most tantalizing issues that separates economists from psychologists-or did until George Loewenstein, Daniel Read, and Roy Baumeister brought some of the best among them together in this comprehensive survey of the most recent research."
-Thomas C. Schelling, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland

How do people decide whether to sacrifice now for a future reward or to enjoy themselves in the present? Do the future gains of putting money in a pension fund outweigh going to Hawaii for New Year's Eve? Why does a person's self-discipline one day often give way to impulsive behavior the next? Time and Decision takes up these questions with a comprehensive collection of new research on intertemporal choice, examining how people face the problem of deciding over time.

Economists approach intertemporal choice by means of a model in which people discount the value of future events at a constant rate. A vacation two years from now is worth less to most people than a vacation next week. Psychologists, on the other hand, have focused on the cognitive and emotional underpinnings of intertemporal choice. Time and Decision draws from both disciplinary approaches to provide a comprehensive picture of the various layers of choice involved.

Shane Frederick, George Loewenstein, and Ted O'Donoghue introduce the volume with an overview of the research on time discounting and focus on how people actually discount the future compared to the standard economic model. Alex Kacelnik discusses the crucial role that the ability to delay gratification must have played in evolution. Walter Mischel and colleagues review classic research showing that four year olds who are able to delay gratification subsequently grow up to perform better in college than their counterparts who chose instant gratification. The book also delves into the neurobiology of patience, examining the brain structures involved in the ability to withstand an impulse.

Turning to the issue of self-control, Klaus Wertenbroch examines the relationship between consumption and available resources, showing, for example, how a high credit limit can lead people to overspend. Ted O'Donoghue and Matthew Rabin show how people's awareness of their self-control problems affects their decision-making. The final section of the book examines intertemporal choice with regard to health, drug addiction, dieting, marketing, savings, and public policy.

All of us make important decisions every day-many of which profoundly affect the quality of our lives. Time and Decision provides a fascinating look at the complex factors involved in how and why we make our choices, so many of them short-sighted, and helps us understand more precisely this crucial human frailty.

GEORGE LOEWENSTEIN is professor of economics and psychology, Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University.

DANIEL READ is reader in operational research, London School of Economics and Political Science.

ROY F. BAUMEISTER is the Eppes Professor of Psychology, Florida State University.

"A splendid book, addressed to an area of interest whose time is just now arriving. The people represented in the volume are a colorful lot, clearly the brightest and most active contributors to the field."
-Robert Abelson, Yale University

Many of our most urgent national problems suggest a widespread lack of concern for the future. Alarming economic conditions, such as low national savings rates, declining corporate investment in long-term capital projects, and ballooning private and public debt are matched by such social ills as diminished educational achievement, environmental degradation, and high rates of infant mortality, crime, and teenage pregnancy. At the heart of all these troubles lies an important behavioral phenomenon: in the role of consumer, manager, voter, student, or parent, many Americans choose inferior but immediate rewards over greater long-term benefits.

Choice Over Time offers a rich sampling of original research on intertemporal choice—how and why people decide between immediate and delayed consequences—from a broad range of theoretical and methodological perspectives in philosophy, political science, psychology, and economics. George Loewenstein, Jon Elster, and their distinguished colleagues review existing theories and forge new approaches to understanding significant questions: Why do people seem to "discount" future benefits? Do individuals use the same decision-making strategy in all aspects of their lives? What part is played by situational factors such as the certainty of delayed consequences? How are decisions affected by personal factors such as willpower and taste?

In addressing these issues, the contributors to Choice Over Time address many social, economic, psychological, and personal time problems. Their work demonstrates the predictive power of short-term preferences in behavior as varied as addiction and phobia, the effect of prices on consumption, and the dramatic rise in debt and decline in savings. Choice Over Time provides an essential source for the most recent research and theory on intertemporal choice, offering new models for time preference patterns—and their aberrations—and presenting a diversity of potential solutions to the problem of "temporal myopia."

GEORGE LOEWENSTEIN is professor of economics and psychology, Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University.

JON ELSTER is Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at the University of Chicago.

CONTRIBUTORS: George Ainslie, Gary S. Becker, Robert H. Frank, Michael Grossman, Nick Haslam, Richard J. Herrnstein, Walter Mishel, Kevin M. Murphy, Drazen Prelec, Howard Rachlin, Andres Raineri, Monica L. Rodriquez, Thomas Schelling, Hersh M. Shefrin, Yuichi Shoda, Richard H. Thaler.

"This highly authoritative study could not be more timely. At a time when many developed countries are having to strengthen their minimum wage provisions in the wake of retreating trade unionism, Low- Wage Work in the United Kingdom's use of sectoral studies greatly enriches our understanding of the causes and consequences of low pay in Britain."
-WILLIAM BROWN, Montague Burton Professor of Industrial Relations and Master of Darwin College, Cambridge University

"This excellent volume combines analysis of the general trends underlying the dramatic growth of low-wage employment in the United Kingdom with detailed case studies of industries in which such work is concentrated. Readers will gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which new government policies and declining trade union influence combined to transform British labor markets over the last three decades, leading to the expansion of low-wage work not only among women, immigrants and racial-ethnic minorities, but also among men across the demographic spectrum. The industry case studies draw on rich, original qualitative data to construct compelling on-the-ground portraits of low-wage work in a variety of settings. A final chapter includes discussion of public policy recommendations. Low-Wage Work in the United Kingdom is a provocative and much-needed analysis that should interest not only area specialists but anyone concerned about the recent proliferation of low-wage work in advanced capitalist societies on both sides of the Atlantic."
-RUTH MILKMAN, professor of sociology and director, Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California, Los Angeles

"Part of an international cross-country program of research on low-wage work, this outstanding study by leading labor economists illuminates the nature, scale, and significance of low-wage work in the United Kingdom. It demonstrates the centrality of low-wage employment to the workings of the contemporary British economy and exposes its deleterious effects on the workers that undertake it. Low-Wage Work in the United Kingdom contradicts, among other things, the pernicious myth that work is increasingly dominated by high value, high-wage knowledge-based employment. It is vital reading for all researchers and policy-makers with a stake in building a better future for our labor force."
-PETER NOLAN, Montague Burton Professor of Industrial Relations, The University of Leeds

The United Kingdom's labor market policies place it in a kind of institutional middle ground between the United States and continental Europe. Low pay grew sharply between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s, in large part due to the decline of unions and collective bargaining and the removal of protections for the low paid. The changes instituted by Tony Blair's New Labour government since 1997, including the introduction of the National Minimum Wage, halted the growth in low pay but have not reversed it. Low-Wage Work in the United Kingdom explains why the current level of low-paying work remains one of the highest in Europe. The authors argue that the failure to deal with low pay reflects a policy approach which stressed reducing poverty, but also centers on the importance of moving people off benefits and into work, even at low wages. The U.K. government has introduced a version of the U.S. welfare to work policies and continues to stress the importance of a highly flexible and competitive labor market. A central policy theme has been that education and training can empower people to both enter work and to move into better paying jobs. The case study research reveals the endemic nature of low paid work and the difficulties workers face in escaping from the bottom end of the jobs ladder. However, compared to the United States, low paid workers in the United Kingdom do benefit from in-work social security benefits, targeted predominately at those with children, and entitlements to non-pay benefits such as annual leave, maternity and sick pay, and crucially, access to state-funded health care. Low-Wage Work in the United Kingdom skillfully illustrates the way that the interactions between government policies, labor market institutions, and the economy have ensured that low pay remains a persistent problem within the United Kingdom.

CAROLINE LLOYD is a senior research fellow at the Economic and Social Research Council Centre on Skills, Knowledge, and Organizational Performance.

GEOFF MASON is senior research fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, London.

KEN MAYHEW is fellow in economics at Pembroke College, Oxford.

CONTRIBUTORS: Marilyn Carroll, Johanna Commander, Eli Dutton, Damian Grimshaw, Susan James, Dennis Nickson,  Matthew Osborne, Jonathan Payne, Robert Solow, Philip Stevens , Chris Warhurst.

A Volume in the RSF Case Studies of Job Quality in Advanced Economies

A penetrating analysis of the Selective Service System: its recruiting services, the makeup and attitude of those who serve on local draft boards, the criteria for deferment or rejection from service, and the application of the principle of universality in the present draft laws. Using data from several sources, the study also explores the position of blacks with respect to military service. Comprehensive recommendations are set forth.

ROGER W. LITTLE is associate professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle.

CONTRIBUTORS:  Harry A. Marimon, James W. Davis Jr., Gary Wamsley, Merrill Roff,  Charles C. Moskos Jr., Irvin G. Katenbrink Jr.