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In this paper, I estimate the impact of unproductive activities on economic growth, labour productivity and income inequality in the United States from 1947 to 2011. Productive activities directly create value, while unproductive activities do not. I develop a new methodology to compute the growth of productive and unproductive activities in terms of flows of income and stocks of fixed assets using input-output matrices and national income accounts. A core feature of my methodology is the notion that the commodification of knowledge and information gives rise to 'information rents'. Information rents are, as I demonstrate, a determinant factor of growth and distribution. I find that unproductive activities have a net positive effect on economic growth and labour productivity, but at the price of increasing income inequality. Unproductive activities that rely on information rents, in particular, have increased income inequality and slowed down value-added growth despite their positive contribution to labour productivity. Information rents have drawn too much value from productive activities and benefitted the top income earners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increasingly sophisticated antidiscrimination laws, discrimination and inequality have proved remarkably resilient. This prompts questions about the limits of law's ability to achieve social change. One way forward is to fashion new legal tools, which impose duties to promote or achieve equality, rather than focusing on individual rights against specific perpetrators. In the past decade in Britain, such fourth generation equality laws have been developed in a distinctive format, requiring the decision-maker to "have due regard" to equality, rather than taking action to achieve such objectives. This standard has triggered a spate of judicial review cases, particularly in response to austerity measures imposing deep budgetary cuts on disadvantaged groups. This Paper's aims are two-fold. The first is to examine the judicial approach to the due regard standard in the light of recent regulatory theory. Do courts consider the due regard standard as a signal for deference, or can it be understood as an example of "reflexive law," facilitating deliberative decision-making rather than imposing external standards likely to meet with resistance from the regulated body? The Paper concludes that courts have struggled to deal with the regulatory challenges presented by the "due regard" standard, wavering between appropriate and inappropriate intervention. The second aim is an analysis of whether a deliberative standard is appropriate in the equality context. The record of judicial review cases demonstrates that such a standard risks legitimating or simply reconfiguring existing inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic theory suggests that monopoly prices hurt consumers but benefit shareholders. But in a world where individuals or households can be both consumers and shareholders, the impact of market power on inequality depends in part on the relative distribution of consumption and corporate equity ownership across individuals or households. The paper calculates this distribution for the United States, using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances and the Consumer Expenditure Survey, spanning nearly three decades from 1989 to 2016. In 2016, the top 20 per cent consumed approximately as much as the bottom 60 per cent, but had 15 times as much corporate equity. Because ownership is more skewed than consumption, increased mark-ups increase inequality. Moreover, over time, corporate equity has become even more skewed relative to consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that government spending played a significant role in stimulating the wave of innovation that hit the U.S. economy in the late 1970s and in the 1980s, as well as the simultaneous increase in inequality and in education attainments. Since the late 1970s U.S. policymakers began targeting commercial innovations more directly and explicitly. We focus on the shift in the composition of public demand toward high-tech goods, which, by increasing the market-size of innovative firms, functions as a de facto innovation policy tool. We build a quality-ladders non-scale growth model with heterogeneous industries and endogenous supply of skills, and show that an increase in the technological content of public spending stimulates R&D, raises the wage of skilled workers, and, at the same time, stimulates human capital accumulation. A calibrated version of the model suggests that government policy explains between 12% and 15% of the observed increase in wage inequality in the period 1976-1991. (JEL: E62, J31, O33, O41) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents changing inequality in employer-provided fringe benefits in the United States using much more comprehensive data than previously available. Inequality growth in broader measures of compensation slightly exceeds wage inequality growth over the 1981–1997 period. Employer costs due to paid leave, pensions, and health insurance fell for low wage labor and rose for high wage labor over this period. The findings suggest income effects as a contributory factor in the relative decline of fringe benefits among low wage workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bequest patterns to children are important in intergenerational models of the distribution of income and wealth. Economies that feature primogeniture will have a greater degree of inequality than those featuring equal division. This paper presents evidence on estate division among children by sex, birth order, family size, estate size, and asset composition. The results presented here are preference-generated not tax-induced due to the tax characteristics within the sampling region. It is shown that equal sharing among children is the rule, a result that casts doubt upon the "altruist" model of inheritance as advanced by Becker and Tomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that inequality in the distribution of landownership adversely affected the emergence of human-capital promoting institutions ( e.g. public schooling), and thus the pace and the nature of the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy, contributing to the emergence of the great divergence in income per capita across countries. The prediction of the theory regarding the adverse effect of the concentration of landownership on education expenditure is established empirically based on evidence from the beginning of the 20th century in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wealth inequality is among tile most extreme forms of stratification in the United States, and upward wealth mobility is not common. Yet mobility is possible, and this paper takes advantage of trends among a unique group to explore the processes that generate mobility. I show that non-Hispanic whites raised in Roman Catholic families have been upwardly mobile in the wealth distribution in recent decades, and I find that unique fertility, marriage and education patterns contributed to this change. I also show that Catholic values related to work and money contributed to relatively high saving and portfolio behavior that facilitated mobility. The results provide important insight into the process by which childhood experiences shape adult well-being, particularly adult wealth ownership. The findings also contribute to understanding of social inequality by identifying important behaviors and processes that facilitate mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The falling cost of international business travel and communication motivates highly-skilled workers who live in developed countries to spend more of their time co-operating with less-skilled workers in developing countries. This tends to narrow the gap between developed and developing countries in the wages of less-skilled workers, but to widen the wage gap within developed countries between highly-skilled and less-skilled workers. The paper formalizes this mechanism and tests it on data for the United States and developing countries. The two effects on wage inequalities of greater co-operation of highly-skilled workers with workers in developing countries both seem quantitatively important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The paper reports a study from a research program designed to examine the effects of social resources on the status attainment process. Social resources are defined as the wealth, status, power, as well as social ties, of those persons who are directly or indirectly linked to the individual. We propose that access to and use of social resources through one's network provide an essential transition between family background and education on the one hand, and the socioeconomic status achievement on the other. The study focuses on the social resources individuals used in seeking first and last jobs. By identifying the occupational status of the personal contact used, it was possible to assess the relative contributions of family background (e.g., father's educational and occupational statuses), education, and social resources (source status) to the explained variation of achieved occupational statuses. Data from a representative sample of males, 20-64, who were then or had been in the civilian labor force in a tri-city area of Northeastern United States confirmed the important and independent effect of social resources on occupational achievement. Potential shift toward a theory of social stratification and mobility with a focus on the use and manipulation of resources from one's social network is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to carry out a comparative analysis of the intergenerational mobility regimes observed in Italy and the United States in the middle of the 1980s. First, I propose a theoretical model that accounts for mobility propensities in terms of underlying generative mechanisms. This model is then operationalized, translated into a hybrid log-linear model for frequencies, and fitted to the pertinent mobility tables to verify whether (a) the observed data offer evidence in favour of the existence of the hypothesized mechanisms; and (b) cross- sex and/or cross-national dissimilarities in the action of such mechanisms do exist. The analysis shows that (a) all the hypothesized mechanisms contribute to generating the observed mobility regimes; (b) general resources and the objective desirability of classes account for most of the variation in mobility propensities observed in the two countries under study; (c) in both countries, men and women are characterized by the same mobility regime, except that women are less likely to inherit their father's business; (d) compared with the United States, Italy is characterized by a substantially higher degree of class inequality in terms of mobility chances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a paucity of cross-national studies of earnings inequality. This is unfortunate, since the ways that individual characteristics and work structures influence earnings are likely to be heavily dependent on the institutional frameworks of different countries. This paper investigates how work structures affect the earnings of labor force members in the United States and Norway. Our analysis-based on data collected as part of the cross-national `Class Structure and Class Consciousness' project-suggests that both structural and individual variables are needed to account for the generation of economic inequality. Moreover, while some work structures affect earnings similarly in the two countries, there are notable differences. For example, our results suggest that earnings are more standardized in Norway, as wage gains made by organized workers `spill over' to those in unorganized sectors. In particular, union membership is less strongly related to earnings among Norwegian as compared to U.S. men; and there are greater differences in earnings among occupational groups for men in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does exposure to economic inequality undermine belief in the American dream? Scholarship has long argued that the availability of meritocratic ideologies like the American dream inoculates people against exposure to inequality by leading them to rationalize unequal outcomes by viewing wealth as due to hard work and poverty as due to indolence. The existence of inequality where the "have-nots" are working poor, however, could serve to undermine such a process because their employment status casts them as "deserving poor" and limits the applicability of agency-based explanations for poverty. Across two experiments embedded in national surveys, exposure to inequality alone did not cause significant reductions in belief in the American dream; however, exposure to inequality where the have-nots were working poor significantly reduced belief in the American dream. Moderation and mediation analyses indicate these effects were most pronounced among lower-income Americans and indirectly heightened support for government reduction of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report findings from a conjoint experiment where respondents indicated what they viewed as an appropriate sentence for a series of hypothetical individuals convicted of federal crimes. The experiment signaled the race of the defendant by using distinctively "Black" and "white" names, allowing us to assess whether Americans are more punitive toward purportedly Black defendants. We also consider whether signals of the defendant's race condition the effects of the crime and various defendant characteristics. Surprisingly, the direct effect of our signal of defendants' purported race is null. We present evidence that this null finding is a product of offsetting tendencies: respondents who view persistent racial inequalities as the product of both past and ongoing institutional factors prescribed lengthier sentences for white defendants; those who discount these explanations prescribed lengthier sentences for Black defendants. 1 We find only scattered evidence that the signal of defendants' race moderates the effects of other characteristics of the crime and defendant. Our approach and findings not only offer insights into how racial attitudes shape perceptions regarding what constitutes just punishment for crimes in the contemporary United States, but also demonstrate a novel approach to studying this domain and point to an array of promising avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores how U.S. President Thomas Jefferson's views on gender and nationalism were formed. Jefferson's social views were greatly influenced by the time he spent abroad, specifically in France where he praised the French for their social nature and manners. Jefferson was also quick to acknowledge that it would be the U.S. that would experience the highest form of enlightened society. He believed that European mores could have a negative impact on people and institutions in the U.S. The author discusses how Jefferson's belief that women belonged in the domestic sphere separated his views from those of Europeans and how Jefferson believed this would contribute to the U.S.'s superiority over European nations.

Focuses on the appearance of Richard Moore, a former slave and Union veteran before a Republican-controlled committee of Tennessee Assembly to testify against the whipping of masked men. Presentation of pistol and voter registration certificate; Identification of the entire gang; Assessment of civic equality law.

Previous studies generally assume that barriers to internet access are largely passive. That is, exclusion from the Internet is a consequence of poorly resourced individuals, communities, and institutions. This study complicates that assumption by focusing on the active policing and gatekeeping of internet access. Specifically, we estimate the causal effect of free Wi-Fi at chain restaurants on quality-of-life crime reporting by leveraging a staggered difference-in-differences design which compares geo-located crime reports near chain restaurants in Chicago before and after those restaurants introduced free Wi-Fi. We find that free Wi-Fi led to a substantive and significant increase in quality-of-life policing when restaurants were located in wealthier and Whiter areas, but not in other areas. Our findings suggest that internet access itself may be actively policed by social institutions, in our case, national chain restaurants and the police, to protect access for some at the expense of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An estimator of inequality in lifetime incomes is derived. It can be computed for a population from the distribution of incomes in one year. As a result, the estimates are as easily calculated as measurements of annual inequality, but can be used as measurements of lifetime inequality. Estimates from this measure and two others have been computed for selected years since 1947. The results are compared by their implications for the level and trend of inequality in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the causes of "nutritional inequality": why the wealthy eat more healthfully than the poor in the United States. Exploiting supermarket entry and household moves to healthier neighborhoods, we reject that neighborhood environments contribute meaningfully to nutritional inequality. We then estimate a structural model of grocery demand, using a new instrument exploiting the combination of grocery retail chains' differing presence across geographic markets with their differing comparative advantages across product groups. Counterfactual simulations show that exposing low-income households to the same products and prices available to high-income households reduces nutritional inequality by only about 10%, while the remaining 90% is driven by differences in demand. These findings counter the argument that policies to increase the supply of healthy groceries could play an important role in reducing nutritional inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial attitudes are multidimensional, and the corresponding picture we get from survey data on racial attitudes is complex. Tracing the results of major national surveys that provide trends over at least 10 years, and with at least three time points (primarily the General Social Survey and the National Election Studies), this article reveals that complexity. Some survey questions show dramatic changes in support of racial equality, while others reveal stagnation or even increasing negativity or disinterest. The article also describes the differences between whites and blacks in patterns and trends. Although compared to some issues, the survey record on racial attitudes is robust and lengthy, we draw attention to important ways in which it is uneven. We conclude by highlighting areas for future research that focus on improved survey measures that will capture more fully the complexity of contemporary public opinion on racial matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the limitations and strengths of the discordant twin-pair design used by T. Fujiwara and I. Kawachi in their study "Is education causally related to better health? A twin fixed effects study in the United States," published in the 2009 issue. It notes the dramatic limitation of the statistical power in the fixed-effects analyses and the resulting highly imprecise estimates. It also discusses the inconsistency of the few available twin studies on social inequality in health.

In this article, we extend research on neighborhood social isolation by (1) examining residents of disadvantaged and advantaged communities and (2) considering the character of neighborhoods where people conduct routine activities away from home. We contend that social isolation is experienced by residents of both highly disadvantaged and highly advantaged neighborhoods because the two groups spend time in largely nonoverlapping parts of the city. Individual and neighborhood race-ethnic dynamics exacerbate such social isolation. Data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey show that social isolation is experienced by residents of all areas of the city, whether highly disadvantaged or advantaged. African Americans, Latinos and residents of areas with many Latinos suffer additional penalties in the social isolation of disadvantage in where they conduct routine activities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Explanations of the financial crisis of 2008 have centred upon inadequate regulation stemming from laissez-faire ideology and low interest rates. Although true, the deeper determining forces of wage stagnation and dramatically increasing inequality in the USA over the preceding 35 years have received less notice. Wage stagnation and heightened inequality generated three dynamics that made the economy vulnerable to systemic dysfunction. First, consumption was constrained, reducing profitable investment potential in the real economy and encouraging an ever-wealthier elite to flood financial markets with credit, helping keep interest rates low, stimulating the creation of new credit instruments, greater indebtedness and speculation. The second dynamic is that consumption externalities were generated, forcing households to struggle harder to maintain the welfare of their families and their relative social status, resulting in plummeting household saving, ever-greater indebtedness and longer work hours. The third dynamic is that as the rich took larger shares of income and wealth, they gained more command over ideology and hence politics, resulting in tax cuts for the rich, reduced welfare for the poor and deregulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the recent economic crisis has demonstrated, inequality often spans credit and labor markets, supporting a system of cumulative disadvantage. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this research draws on stigma, cumulative disadvantage and status characteristics theories to examine whether credit and labor markets intersect through the event of bankruptcy to disadvantage certain individuals over time. The transmission of bankruptcy's stigma across markets occurs in a specific legal setting where, even though the current U.S. Bankruptcy Code grants bankrupters a fresh start through debt forgiveness, the Fair Credit Reporting Act limits bankrupters' ability to begin anew because it permits employers to access credit reports. My findings highlight these ambiguities and show that, net of their previous labor market statuses, bankrupters spend less time working and have lower earnings than nonbankrupters. Thus, having become bankrupt exposes people to subsequent disadvantage in the labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses race, segregation and concentrated poverty in the U.S. through an examination of the country's geography, including cities, suburbs and rural small towns. The impact that the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 had on the socioeconomic conditions of ethnic and racial minority neighborhoods is discussed. An overview of the relationship between spatial inequality, which is also referred to as the "geography of inequality," socioeconomic mobility and access to labor markets, is discussed.

During the past fifteen years, EU equality law has expanded to provide some protection from discrimination related to gender identity and sexual orientation. In the light of subsequent legislation and case-law, this Article examines the meaning of equality that is being elaborated with respect to these grounds. A range of interpretations can be applied to the idea of equality. Some entail little challenge to the general social order, in particular where equality is understood to mean formal equal treatment of individuals in comparable situations. In contrast, more radical readings of equality pose a challenge to established social conventions around gender or the family. This Article explores the role of courts (in particular) in determining which concept of equality should be applied. In the context of this analysis, a comparison is made with law in the United States, and the response of courts and legislators there to sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article argues that over the past years, in Europe, some instruments and policies dealing with gender equality both at the national and supra-national level reflect a move from a narrow antidiscrimination frame to a broader model that tackles the under-participation and disempowerment of women in public and private life as a deficiency of democracy and a problem of citizenship. By analyzing specific parity measures that have been adopted recently in some European Member States, such as electoral and corporate board gender quotas in publically held companies, the Article posits that a new understanding between parity democracy, sex equality and antidiscrimination law is evolving and explains why a combination of legal, historical, cultural, ideological and political factors make it unlikely that a similar development will take place in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent evolution of European Union equality law, and the equality law of single European countries, is marked by the increased attention given to the procedural and institutional preconditions for the effective protection against discrimination. In this context, the creation of public bodies specially tasked with the promotion of equal treatment (equality institutions), which used to be a specific feature of only some European countries, such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, as well as some non-European countries such as the United States, is now common all over Europe. The immediate reason for this development is that equality institutions have been imposed on all EU Member States by means of a series of EU directives in the early years of this century. From a comparative law perspective, we can observe here an interesting example of legal transfer which leaves much room for bricolage at the national level, and has given rise to a hybrid legal regime which combines legal rights with softer mechanisms of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores multiracial ethnic groups in U.S. society and inequality in educational opportunities and outcome. The author utilizes data from a national study to argue that the outcomes of multiracial groups and individuals are not reducible to measures of appearance. It is suggested that parental education and family income are the most important indicators of educational outcomes. The article discusses these indicators in light of racial inequality and the implications for research. Other topics include the Latin Americanization hypothesis, racial divides, and single-race groups.

The article explores the connection between isolation from job opportunities and the persistence of gender and racial inequalities in U.S. society. The authors utilize survey data to suggest that a significant white male advantage over white women and Hispanics in number of job leads. The role of social networks and social capital in sustaining this advantage is discussed. Inequality in the receipt of job information is tied to high levels of supervisory authority. Other topics include minorities in the labor market, civil rights, and equal opportunity.

Globalization creates pressure for greater inequality throughout the world, but these pressures are expressed more fully in the United States than in other developed nations. Although the distribution of US income before taxes is no more unequal than other nations, after taxes it is considerably less egalitarian. This occurs because of specific institutional arrangements that fail to redistribute income effectively and allow the pressures of globalization to be fully realized. These arrangements represent a shift from the past and were deliberately enacted over the past two decades with divergent consequences for those at the top and bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy. The realignment of the US political economy can ultimately be traced to America's legacy of racism. Once leaders in the Democratic party sought to include African Americans in the benefits of Roosevelt's New Deal, support for economic populism evaporated in the middle and working classes. The advantage of the wealthy is further enhanced by a political system in which those with money are better able to have their interests served legislatively than the poor or working classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the significance of the democratic vision of former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. Americans looked up on him as a teacher of democracy due to his ability to balance the tensions between liberty and security. It is expressed that Lincoln's vision continued to influence the Americans even beyond his death. According to the author, Lincoln has addressed then issues of slavery, imperialism and tyranny that made the country a more democratic nation. Lincoln is known for his virtues of prudence and equality.

The article presents the author's discussion regarding the beliefs of former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln about slavery and racial equality in the country. He offers an overview on the efforts of Lincoln to emancipate African-Americans and provide their rights on racial equality. The author argues that Lincoln was determined in his beliefs regarding the need to abolish slavery and bring equal justice between white and black Americans. He stresses that Lincoln worked for the cause of emancipation and civil equality that brought his life to an end.

The American jury is heralded as an institution that is simultaneously representative and egalitarian. However, jury studies conducted 50 years ago found that white, upper-class men dominate jury deliberations, presumably due to their higher status outside of the jury room. Logistic regression analysis of dyadic influence inside the jury room updates this research. Results indicate that today upper-class jurors alone - not men, not whites - are regarded as most influential in deliberations. Upper-class jurors' influence is not simply a product of status deference. Rather, upper-class jurors seem to influence deliberations due to generalized expectations of their competence or their possession of skill sets that enhance jury room performance. We conclude that increased statistical representation in the jury pool does not guarantee that diverse views will affect verdicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, we first document that the recent increase in income inequality in the U.S. has not been accompanied by a corresponding rise in consumption inequality. Much of this divergence is due to different trends in within-group inequality, which has increased significantly for income, but little for consumption. We then develop a simple framework that allows us to characterize analytically how within-group income inequality affects consumption inequality in a world in which agents can trade a full set of contingent consumption claims, subject to endogenous constraints emanating from the limited enforcement of intertemporal contracts. Finally, we quantitatively evaluate, in the context of a calibrated general equilibrium production economy, whether this set-up, or alternatively a standard incomplete markets model, can account for the documented stylized consumption inequality facts from the U.S. data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By allowing voters to choose among candidates with competing policy orientations and by providing incentives for incumbents to shape policy in the direction the public desires, elections are thought to provide the foundation that links government policy to the preferences of the governed. In this article I examine the extent to which the preference/policy link is biased toward the preferences of high-income Americans. Using an original data set of almost two thousand survey questions on proposed policy changes between 1981 and 2002, I find a moderately strong relationship between what the public wants and what the government does, albeit with a strong bias toward the status quo. But I also find that when Americans with different income levels differ in their policy preferences, actual policy outcomes strongly reflect the preferences of the most affluent but bear virtually no relationship to the preferences of poor or middle-income Americans. The vast discrepancy I find in government responsiveness to citizens with different incomes stands in stark contrast to the ideal of political equality that Americans hold dear. Although perfect political equality is an unrealistic goal, representational biases of this magnitude call into question the very democratic character of our society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standard official measures of household economic well-being in several countries are based on money income. The general consensus is that such measures are limited because they ignore certain crucial determinants of well- being. We examine two such determinants—household wealth and public consumption—in the context of the US. Our findings suggest that the level and distribution of economic well-being is substantially altered when money income is adjusted for wealth or public consumption. Over the 1989-2000 period, median well-being appears to increase faster when these adjustments are made than when standard money income is used. Adding imputed rent and annuity from household wealth to household income increases measured inequality, while adding public consumption reduces it. However, all three measures show about the same rise in inequality over the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article makes contributions toward the conceptualization of the scholarship of teaching and learning (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning). The scholarship of teaching is a concept with multiple ramifications. It i! at the core of the current transformation of higher education. The scholarship of teaching challenges the existing stratification system within the academy. The scholarship of teaching anti learning is a much larger enterprise, a movement, that can transform the nature of American society toward our ideals of equality and justice. Sociologists have a vital role to play within the academy and society. If we take advantage of the opportunity that the scholarship of teaching and learning offers, we can reach our potential as an intellectually liberating force in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to examining the social integration-regulation suicide thesis, we develop and test a racial inequality suicide thesis to explain how socioeconomic status inequities between blacks and whites influence suicide risk among black males. Negative binomial regression techniques are employed to model black male suicide counts for U.S. metropolitan areas in 1980. Our findings demonstrate that the risk of black male suicide is higher in areas where occupational and income inequalities between blacks and whites are greater. We also find detrimental effects associated with marital disruption and certain types of family living arrangements. In light of our findings, we revisit our theory and make suggestions for additional research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American intergovernmental relationships are continually redefined through political processes by which the state and federal governments seek to achieve their respective policy goals. Following a summary of the development of federal policy for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste (HLW). federal court cases that have resulted from the selection of Nevada as the nation's host for a HLW repository are discussed. The cases raise, in a unique way, questions regarding the equality of states' power in the context of constitutional principles such as the equal footing doctrine, the privileges and immunity clause, and the Tenth Amendment. Questions are also raised regarding the ability of states to safeguard their interests in the political arena as described in Garcia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the hollowness of U.S. pretensions to equality and social justice. Reports from the U.S. press devoted to foreign news during the years of the French Revolution; Distribution of the francophilic milleanist literature in mid-Atlantic and New England towns and cities in mid-1790s; Relationship between violence and inequality.

Explores the alternative view of politics and constitutional law in the U.S. Effect of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment on the definition of racial equality; Dispute between W. E. B. Du Bois and other leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) regarding racial equality; Legal campaigns initiated by the NAACP aimed at abolishing school segregation.

Discusses the federal protection of constitutional rights in the U.S. during World War II. Number of lynchings occurred between 1889 and 1941; Impact of the lynching of Cleo Wright on the protection of racial equality; Efforts of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to alter the legality of racial discrimination.

The article focuses on how multicultural organizing can help improve the lives of individuals, families and communities. What does social work's knowledge of multicultural organizing suggest for influencing growing income inequalities and the shift from federal to local administration of social welfare services? The objective for organizing diverse ethnic groups in a community is to achieve reciprocal empowerment so that together the groups can work toward social justice. Given the social situation in the United States, this effort implies a complete transformation of the social structure, constructing equitable and just political, economic, and intergroup relationships. In this process, diversity must be understood and respected and its strengths put to good use in forging unity. Through unity in diversity and social change, multicultural community organizers can be instrumental in promoting greater equity. This promise of multicultural practice will remain unfulfilled if social workers continue to only react to societal changes and maintain the current structure of profession and education. Multicultural community practice will require redesigning social work education and practice. Significant changes must occur in how social workers educate students for collaborative, empowerment-based practice. It also requires the participation of social workers in nontraditional settings as activists, advocates, and mobilizers of community potential.

This article provides information on the factors affecting the framing of stories about inequality, discrimination, and bad luck. As of 1997, political leaders in the U.S. have allegedly raised serious questions about the basic necessities of life. While the debate has not always been framed in racial terms, and talk about equality has often been subordinated to discussions about efficiency and global competitiveness, social programs originally designed to improve the social status of African Americans are being threatened by the so-called Republican revolution. The U.S. Congress and numerous state legislatures have begun active reconsideration of the merits of affirmative action. Allegedly, there has been serious consideration of reducing, or even eliminating, the long-standing commitment to universal service in basic telecommunications at the same time that the nation's leaders talk about ushering in the Information Age. Such political discussions are based in part on an assessment of the success or failure of efforts to achieve social goals. The speed with which such a process of reexamination has been able to move forward reflects a perception that is apparently shared by a substantial part of the population.