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While there is a widespread belief that stable employment is important for social integration, stable employment careers have become less common in America's increasingly complex labor market. Job tenure has dropped, precarious work arrangements have gained prominence, long-term unemployment has spiked, and an increasing share of the jobless are not looking for work. Against this background, we investigate the linkages between labor market experiences and volunteer activities, as an indicator of people's involvement in civic life. We outline a theory on how transitions between labor market states—within, into, and out of the labor force—bring about changes in civic engagement and test our predictions using panel data from the Current Population Survey 2002–2015. Contrary to what much previous research suggests, we find that people who become unemployed are more likely to start volunteering and no more likely to stop. We additionally show that people who leave the labor force altogether (i.e. not having a job nor looking for one) are more likely to stop volunteering. Conversely, entering the labor force, either by securing or searching for a job, is associated with an increase in volunteer activities. We explore the role of motivation and time resources in accounting for these patterns, finding among other things that moving into or out of the most detached labor market state—outside the labor force without any intention to find work—is most consequential for civic engagement. We discuss the implications of our findings for civic democracy in light of ongoing labor market trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals with disabilities experience lower education levels, lower employment rates, fewer household resources, and poorer health than people without disabilities. Yet, despite comprising more than one-eighth of the US population, people with disabilities are seldom integrated into sociological studies of inequality. This study uses time use as a lens through which to understand one type of inequality between working-aged people with and without disabilities: participation in daily activities. It also tests whether social disparities (as suggested by the social model of disability) or health disparities (as suggested by the medical model of disability) explain a larger percentage of participation differences. I first consider if disability predicts daily time in market work, nonmarket work, tertiary (health-related) activities, and leisure—net of health and sociodemographic characteristics. Next, I utilize Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to assess the relative contribution of these characteristics in explaining time differences. Results from the American Time Use Survey indicate that adults with disabilities spend less time than adults without disabilities in market work and more time in tertiary activities and leisure. There is no difference in nonmarket time. Health accounts for the largest percentage of the explained component of tertiary time differences, but depending on the choice of predictors, sociodemographic characteristics account for as much—or more—of the explained component of differences in market and leisure time. Results indicate the importance of disentangling disability from health in sociological studies of inequality. They also support a hybrid disability model in suggesting that both health and sociodemographic characteristics determine how disability shapes daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A vast literature demonstrates how personal networks mirror and reproduce broader patterns of social inequality. The availability of key resources through informal mechanisms is an important way that high-status Americans retain a host of social advantages. Largely absent from this account of social capital inequality, however, is an explicit temporal dimension. The current article addresses that gap by targeting the dynamic nature of personal networks. Specifically, we consider whether race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) are associated with how US adults' resource-providing ties persist or vanish between two time points. Using panel data from the Portraits of American Life Study, we find that non-Whites and lower-SES Americans tend to receive useful advice and practical help from fewer close ties than do White and higher-SES adults, while Black Americans are especially likely to receive financial assistance from their network members. Models fail to indicate that non-Whites lose these resourceful ties at a disproportionate rate over time. On the other hand, we find that income has a robust association with the ability to retain ties initially providing advice and help. We interpret the latter findings as a temporal manifestation of network-based inequality. The maintenance gap between higher- and lower-SES Americans, we argue, can reinforce other social capital disparities by shaping dependable access to important resources and by altering their ability to effectively mobilize resources. Network maintenance is a concept that could be useful to researchers studying how social capital matters for a variety of instrumental and expressive outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neighborhood effects scholarship suggests that neighborhoods may impart different effects across the early life-course because children's interactions with neighborhood actors and institutions evolve across the stages of child development. This paper expands our understanding of neighborhood effects on cognitive and non-cognitive development across childhood and early adolescence by capitalizing on thirteen waves of restricted and never-before-used longitudinal data from the NLSY Child and Young Adult (1986-2010) sample. The findings from within-child fixed-effects interaction models suggest that while younger children are immune to neighborhood effects on their cognitive development, older children consistently suffer a steep penalty for growing up in disadvantaged neighborhoods. This neighborhood disadvantage penalty persists among older children despite alternative age constructs. Further, the results are robust to various adjustments for observed and unobserved sources of bias, model specifications, and also manifest as cumulative and lagged effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Latin Americanization thesis posits that the racial hierarchy in the United States is now composed of Whites, Honorary Whites, and Collective Blacks, with skin tone being the primary determinant of one's placement within this tripartite system of social status. Extant research mostly examines this approach at the macro level; relatively little is known about the thesis at the micro level. By examining goal-oriented task groups, our experiment tests whether Whites exhibit transitive levels of influence, a behavioral indicator of social status, in a manner consistent with this three-tier system. Furthermore, with applications of graph-theoretic models from status characteristics and status cue theories, we assess the social psychological mechanisms buttressing the proposed racial hierarchy by comparing propositions from four theories put forth by scholars of race/ethnicity (we translate their propositions into graphs and mathematical calculations). In so doing, we pose the question: In our experimental setting, which matters more, skin tone or ethnic background, or do both have equal effects on behavior? Our results support the purported racial hierarchy of the Latin Americanization thesis. On average, Whites were influenced the most by White confederates; Whites were influenced less by their light-skinned Latino/a confederates, and even less by dark-skinned Latino/a confederates. Model fit statistics for the propositions translated into graphs and values demonstrate that ethnic distinctions and skin tone are independent stratifiers in the form of status characteristics. This finding supports the notion that skin tone and ethnic background have the equivalent capacity to invoke processes to create the tripartite system of racial/ethnic inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research suggests that participation in organized extracurricular activities by children and adolescents can have educational and occupational payoffs. This research also establishes that participation is strongly associated with social class. However, debate has ensued--primarily among qualitative researchers--over whether the association between class and activities stems exclusively from inequalities in objective resources and constraints or whether differing cultural orientations have a role. We address this debate using a nationally representative sample of children's time diaries, merged with extensive information on their families, to model participation in, and expenditures on, organized activities. While we cannot directly observe cultural orientations, we account for a substantially wider array of resources and constraints than previous studies. We find that, above and beyond these factors, maternal education has a consistently large effect on the outcomes we study. We discuss the plausibility of a cultural interpretation of this result, as well as alternative interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High rates of Hispanic fertility raise an important question: Do Hispanic newborn babies start life's race behind the starting line, poor and disadvantaged? To address this question, we link the newborn infants identified with the new fertility question in the 2006-2010 American Community Survey (ACS) to the poverty status of mothers. Our results document the disproportionately large share (40 percent) of Hispanic babies who are born into poverty. The prospect of poverty is especially high in new Hispanic destinations, especially those in rural areas. For Hispanic newborn babies, poverty cannot be reduced to supply-side explanations that emphasize maladaptive behavioral decisionmaking of parents, that is, nonmarital or teen childbearing, low educational attainment, acquisition of English language skills, or other dimensions of human capital. Hispanics in new destinations often start well behind the starting line--in poverty and with limited opportunities for upward mobility and an inadequate welfare safety net. The recent concentration of Hispanic poverty in new immigrant destinations portends continuing intergenerational inequality as today's newborn infants make their way to productive adult roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the types of neighborhoods that black and white homebuyers have secured loans in during the recent housing boom and subsequent bust. We expand upon and refine previous research on locational attainment using loan-level data from the 1992-2010 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) combined with tract- and metropolitan-level data from the 1990, 2000, and 2010 Census and the American Community Survey. Multilevel models show that black homebuyers are moving into considerably more racially segregated neighborhoods than their white counterparts and that their access to "whiter" neighborhoods did not expand during the housing boom, even after controlling for the racial composition of the metropolitan area and other key ecological factors. Conversely, new white homebuyers have been moving into neighborhoods with greater percent black residents, which may be a contributing factor in observed declines in segregation during the past few decades. Additionally, black homebuyers in metropolitan areas with greater suburban growth were on average accessing homes in more integrated neighborhoods. Finally, the models explained considerably more of the variation in the neighborhood racial composition of whites compared to blacks. These findings are suggestive of a dual housing market, one in which the experiences of blacks are still systematically different than those of whites, despite expanded access to homeownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study conducts a nationwide, locally comparative analysis of the extent to which natural hazards contribute to residential mobility in the United States and how this influence varies for racial and ethnic minorities. Analyses combine census data on households with data from thousands of recorded natural hazards during the late 1990s. Findings affirm that natural hazards are common throughout the country; that associated property damage correlates positively with increases in residential mobility for all groups; that these increases are particularly noticeable among racial and ethnic minorities because of preexisting inequalities in mobility; and that areas with more costly damage tend to pull as well as push migrants, especially Latinos and Asians. Implications for existing theory, methods, and policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social class confers a bundle of capabilities, practices, and beliefs that are conventionally assumed to be hierarchical, rigid, and self-perpetuating. However, this framework often belies the fact that these qualities needn't be necessarily or exhaustively advantageous. In particular, social change may render obsolete class-linked characteristics that were advantageous in previous periods. Drawing on interviews with homeowners at risk of foreclosure and a yearlong ethnography of a housing counseling organization, I find that although the housing crisis of the “Great Recession” affected both working- and middle-class homeowners alike, the practices of working-class borrowers better positioned them to exploit a number of informational advantages in the rapidly changing mortgage modification setting. My findings are a departure from existing research that treats middle-class capabilities and practices as intrinsically advantageous. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research links sex ratios with the likelihood of marriage and divorce. However, whether sex ratios similarly influence precursors to marriage (transitions in and out of dating or cohabiting relationships) is unknown. Utilizing data from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study and the 2000 U.S. Census, this study assesses whether sex ratios influence the formation and stability of emerging adults' romantic relationships. Findings show that relationship formation is unaffected by partner availability, yet the presence of partners increases women's odds of cohabiting, decreases men's odds of cohabiting, and increases number of dating partners and cheating among men. It appears that sex ratios influence not only transitions in and out of marriage, but also the process through which individuals search for and evaluate partners prior to marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We use the National Violence against Women (and Men) Survey to examine the effects of region and race on the tendency to carry weapons for protection. We find that Southern and Western whites are much more likely than Northern whites to carry guns for self-protection, controlling for their risk of victimization. The difference between Southern and Northern whites is particularly strong for women. We do not find much evidence for regional/race differences in carrying knives or mace. These findings provide support for the idea that regional differences in weapon carrying reflect a gun culture rather than an honor culture. We see more evidence of an honor culture among blacks: they are more likely than whites to carry knives as well as guns, controlling for their risk of victimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In what way do movements move? What do we mean by the movement of movements? While still a rather unconventional stance, I advance the argument that social movements are, at root, culture production agents. Regardless of whatever else they may accomplish, movements produce new cultural forms in the course of struggle; they often change and augment cultural stock in the process, and sometimes live on for generations in collective memory. My answer to the query follows a movement-centered production and circulation of culture template organized around several major moments of culture moves: moving across space, moving emotions, moving social-cultural conditions and moving through memory. I illustrate culture moves in these four moments using sociological and historical studies of the long civil rights movement, suggesting a variety of research agendas along the way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Denominational and attendance differences in attitudes toward a broad range of family issues are examined using NORC data for whites (N of about 11,000) for 11 polls conducted between 1972 and 1984. Findings are presented with and without controls for sex, age, income, education, and region. Protestant fundamentalists along with Baptists and Catholics were most conservative; Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians were moderates; and Episcopalians, Jews, and nones were most liberal. Approximate rank orders of the nine groups were consistent across family issues; however, no group was found to be consistently conservative, as the level of conservatism varied with the content of the issues. Attendance was found to be positively related to conservatism for all eight religious bodies (and unrelated for nones) with the degree of relationship varying directly with the degree of relative conservatism of the denominations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Using data from the November 1979 Current Population Survey on ethnic ancestry, this paper examines the strength and patterns of ethnic intermarriage in the United States, investigating some of the implications of rising intermarriage rates. After noting the infrequency of marriages across the dividing line of European/non-European ancestry, we focus on marriages between individuals of European (or American Indian) ancestry. Employing a log-linear modeling strategy, we identify several major influences on intermarriage: group size; type of ancestry, that is, mixed versus single; and degree of ethnic relatedness. These findings illuminate one key dynamic behind rising intermarriage among white ethnics. Namely, even though persons of unmixed ancestry still exhibit fairly strong tendencies to marry endogamously, a shift in the relative frequency of mixed versus unmixed ancestry is reducing the sizes of the categories with the strongest in-marriage tendencies and increasing the sizes of those with weaker such tendencies. We suggest that these findings offer a possible partial resolution of the debate over the role of ethnicity in American society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social roles are the institutionally proper ways for an individual to participate in his society and thus satisfy his needs and wants. But roles are also demands upon the individual, norms that prescribe certain acts and forbid others. Moreover at times role obligations are difficult to reconcile. Thus, the non-com is subject to one set of pressures from commissioned officers in authority over him and to another from his fellow enlisted men. Such competing obligations have been labeled "role conflicts," and several studies exist of verbal responses to hypothetical role conflict situations. Valuable as role conflict may be as an initiator of necessary change, it is not entirely desirable from the viewpoint of the social system either. For, after all, a social system must make provisions for stability as well as for progress. Some control over incompatible claims must exist in every society. If a social system is too flexible, stable expectations cannot exist, and anomie results. Hence, even in a society as the U.S. mechanisms must exist to provide minimum control over role conflicts.

The article presents a study on group leadership. In this era of economic warfare and special pleading by various organized groups in the American social scene it may be enlightening to reflect upon the forces which make for the success or failure of such groups. In designing a formula for success it may be said that achievement by such organizations-whether they be comprised of employers, laborers, farmers, etc.-is a product of three basic factors: the extent to which the aims and objectives of the organization satisfy a definitely felt need among its members, the type of leadership which directs the energies of the organization in obtaining its objectives, and the degree of resistance provided by other groups or impersonal forces. During the recent war period many foremen and supervisors in the bituminous coal-mining industry turned to unionization and sought collective bargaining recognition from the mine operators. This entire movement provides an excellent case study of how the second of these factors for group success, the leadership element, may direct an economic organization into eventual disintegration. An analysis of its development suggests the conclusion that the type of leadership with the highest potential for success is one, which is both spontaneous, i.e., risen from the ranks and single-minded in purpose.

The efforts of Negroes to adjust to their minority status have manifested themselves in many collective endeavors. The present paper proposes to make a beginning toward filling the gap by sketching briefly the origins and functions of fraternal organizations among Negroes. One of them is the secret society. A careful study of the Negro secret society as an institution will throw much light on the processes of acculturation and assimilation. The numerous Negro secret societies in the United States are now and always have been almost exclusively ceremonial, i.e. lodges and fraternal orders. There never has been a Negro secret society which even slightly resembled the Ku Klux Klan. The abortive slave insurrections, even one so carefully planned as Denmark Vesey's, were never made under the banner of a secret society. The first secret society in the United States which emphasized benevolent features was the Odd Fellows. The Odd Fellows merely introduced Negroes to the secrecy feature of benevolent organizations, for people of color had been organizing friendly societies since 1787.

Great credence has been given to the belief that Negroes are naturally inclined toward religion and frequently the cultural possibilities of the race have been evaluated from premises based on this precise belief. No other conclusion about the Negro in America has been so taken for granted as that concerning the innately religious character of his temperament. It is the Leitmotiv of this article, however, that the social milieu in which the Negro lived under the slave system demanded for its maintenance, powerful psychological compensations which were most safely and satisfactorily provided by an exaggerated emphasis on religion. In regard to the older group, all indicated church connection, either Baptist or Methodist, the latter church claiming only three. All but one of the group had at least one slave parent although none of the respondents were old enough to have personal memories of slavery. Such expressions are undoubtedly representative of patterns of thought among Negroes of an earlier generation. Religion is a dominating factor, and it is a personal intimate religion which necessarily relegates the church to an incidental place in the lives of the believers.

The purpose of this study has been an attempt to show the changing role of the college Nisei during the crisis period from the time of the Japanese aggression on Manchuria in 1931 until 1944. The most unusual characteristic of the Japanese population in the United States is the sharp dichotomy of the Issei and the Nisei. The impact of American culture and institutions upon second generation children of immigrant stock has long been the object of careful research by social scientists. Yet perhaps no group offers a more fruitful area for study than the Nisei or second generation Americans of Japanese ancestry. Only in its marginal economic and social position, and its consequent unwillingness to migrate to other sections of the United States, did the college Nisei betray their dependence upon the Japanese community and some of its institutions. The extent of the dispersion of the college Nisei is shown by the respective number of college student bodies having second generation Japanese in 1941, 1943, and 1944.

The article summarizes some of the data and conclusions of a study intended as a first step toward a more adequate definition of the term "American." The study, made under the auspices of the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina, is described as a "lexicographic analysis" of alleged characteristics, ideals and principles of the U.S. citizen. The observers find much in American life to justify the widespread conception of the U.S. as a land of education. They profess to see an almost blind worship of schooling, a belief that knowledge is power and an intense desire to gain that power on a national scale. But some of the observers see another side of the picture. They charge that the principal value of schooling is a money value and one goes to school for financial gain. A number of critics mention the strong frontier tradition, which scorns book learning, culture and the expert. Most of the critics who see the U.S. as dominated by the profit motive see a consequent neglect of the spiritual side of life, including religion, literature and the arts. It is claimed by some that the American religion, however conspicuous it may be in national life, is chiefly a "Sunday religion," which can be conveniently forgotten during the business week.

The growth of personality occurs through adjustment to an ever-increasing number of groups. This process of adjustment consists of accommodation to and assimilation of the attitudes and purposes characteristic of the respective groups. Such is the social nature of man that some degree of disorganization is likely to result if the individual deviates appreciably from group standards, unless he is able to sever his connection in favor of another more consonant with his attitudes. There are trends in the culture of the contemporary U.S. that defy any facile theory of the relationship between social adjustment and personal organization. Values stressed in the home may conflict with those taught in school. Some upholds organized religion while others may deride it, at least by implications, which the young do not fail to comprehend. The competitive process places emphasis upon self-interest, which goes against idealistic teachings. The expansion of secondary groups signifies a trend toward impersonality in social relationships, and modem business and government are far-flung organizations, yet ethical instruction of the conventional type encompasses face-to-face relationships only.

This article deals with the social forces that influenced the U.S. society. Some day the U.S. will have a bureau at Washington, which may go by the name of Anthropometeorology, the Bureau of Human Weather. The Department of Commerce aspires even now to something approaching this function. Business statistics, however, all-embracing as they are, do not yet comprise the whole horizon of man's kenning. The tides in the affairs of men must be charted by experts in sociology, in education and in psychology, as well as in economics. Many difficulties have been experienced by the U.S. but these difficulties with all the ideals is the instability of the foundation on which the far arches rest, of international good-will. One after the another the leaders of humanity are despised and rejected by the very men in whom they had trusted. Nations cannot go very far in international understanding if they do not understand themselves thoroughly. The problem of migration in the U.S. is not simply in a geographical sense, but of migration from group to group. American sociologists cannot find such conditions elsewhere in the world. The phenomena can be studied only in the U.S. Yet it is of vast importance to anyone seeking to analyze the causes of success and failure in the U.S. democracy.