Monthly Archives: December 2011

Better educated people more able to adjust to new health research

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This finding from a study in the December issue of American Sociological Review has been getting a lot of attention: despite efforts to even out the effect more education has on health, higher levels of education still lead to better health outcomes. Here’s why:

Professor Richard Miech of the University of Colorado Denver and colleagues said data have showed for decades middle-aged adults with low education levels — high school or less — are twice as likely to die as those with higher education levels.

Miech’s study, published in the American Sociological Review, provides new understanding as to why death rates for less educated middle-aged adults are much higher than for their more educated peers, despite increased awareness and treatments aimed at reducing health disparities.

The researchers found as new causes of death emerge, people with lower education levels are slower to respond with behavioral changes, creating a moving target that often remains a step ahead of prevention efforts.

Despite efforts to reduce education-based mortality disparities, the gap remains because new health disparities counteract the efforts to reduce the death rates for those with less education — the causes of death have changed, rates have not, Miech said.

Translation: the world continues to change and certain groups are better positioned in society to take advantage.

What you lose by having a 3-4,000 square foot home compared to a 5-6,000 square foot home

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If you are going to move into or build a 3-4,000 square foot home instead of a 5-6,000 square foot home, what do you lose? A game room, among other things:

Customers increasingly are opting for alternate uses for the room that used to house the pool table and bar. Real estate agents and builders cite a number of reasons, from people’s tastes changing, a sign of the economic times or a baby boomer generation growing older, as reasons.

Going without a game room is not necessarily a sign that people are entertaining less, but more an indicator that custom homebuyers are making more practical decisions about what they want their living space to contain, says A. Faye Scoller, of the Scholler Group Prudential PenFed Realty…

“Additionally, we are seeing a lot less of the ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ in terms of the total square footage,” Booth notes. “Where we used to build 5,000- to 6,000-square-foot McMansions, now customers are reducing their space requirements, and now custom homes, with the same high-end amenities and extras, are in the 3,000- to 4,000-square-foot range.”

A smaller footprint comes from eliminating the game room and dining room and making one large and airy great room that can serve multiple uses, Booth said.

Both home sizes are large but you would have to make changes if you lose several thousand square feet.

The most interesting part of this to me is that although these houses may be smaller, this one builder suggests the smaller homes still have the “same high-end amenities and extras.” People may not want space but they still want the luxury items associated with a big home. At the same time, does this mean that a pool table and a bar are no longer desirable status symbols?

The Presidents who can’t go to church

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Much has been made of American’s desire for the President to have religious faith and/or attend church. But what happens if the hoopla that comes with the President going anywhere means that they can’t go to church?

It’s hard to imagine any future President being able to attend church–much less teach Sunday School–without an attendant hullabaloo. And that’s too bad. The men and women we put in that office will confront serious questions on life-and-death issues and find themselves under enormous amounts of stress. For those for whom religion has been important, it could be helpful to have the outlet of a congregation where they could reflect and be renewed. The individuals who serve as President give up many personal freedoms in order to do so. A community of worship shouldn’t have to be one of them.

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How do we know if there is a small house trend?

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One summary of 2011 makes a provocative claim: “How Small Spaces Trumped McMansions.” The problem: the review has little to no evidence to back up this claim.

Here are ways we could know that small spaces really trumped McMansions:

1. Look at the average size of the new American home. This has indeed dropped. But this doesn’t necessarily mean Americans are buying small or tiny houses, just smaller new homes. And McMansions have been on the decline for the last few years, not just in 2011.

2. Look at how many small or tiny homes are sold. I haven’t seen any statistics on this nor do I know if anyone is actually compiling this data.

3. Look at whether there is an increase in media coverage of small or tiny homes. I wouldn’t be surprised if this did happen in 2011 but this means a change in media coverage, not necessarily a shift in people’s actions.

4. Look at what builders say they will be building in the near future. Builders seem to think the trend is downward but again, I don’t think most of them are really building small houses, just smaller.

5. Look at whether small or tiny homes are drawing the attention of our best thinkers about homes (architects, designers, others) and government officials. Perhaps this has happened but some data would be nice.

Overall, we need some more data about this possible trend. I think there is evidence that McMansions have been on the decline but we need more data about small houses.

Sociology: the study of constrained choices

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I recent saw a blurb about a new online course that explores how sociology explains how we make choices:

In his lecture “If You’re So Free, Why Do You Follow Others? The Sociology and Science Behind Social Networks,” part of Floating University’s Great Big Ideas course, Christakis explains why individual actions are inextricably linked to sociological pressures. Whether you’re absorbing altruism performed by someone you’ll never meet or deciding to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, collective phenomena affect every aspect of your life.

Christakis is well-known for research in recent years that shows things like obesity and emotions spreading through social networks and affecting friends of friends.

But this larger idea about constrained choices is interesting. When faced with a new Introduction to Sociology class at the beginning of the semester, this is one of the ideas that I present to them: sociology is less interested in how individuals make their individual choices and more interested in how larger social factors, society, culture, institutions, networks, etc., constrain the choices of individuals in certain ways. While we live in a culture that loves to celebrate individual choice, we don’t really have completely free choices to make. Common areas of analysis in sociology, such as race, social class, and gender, can open up or limit possible choices for individuals.

Of course, there are sociologists more interested in individual choice. This has led to a larger debate in the discipline between agency and structure. But overall, sociologists tend to focus more than other disciplines on social factors that often unknowingly affect all of us.

UPDATE 12/21/11: The Washington Post gives more information on this course that will be offered on a few elite college campuses as well as online.

When Chicago’s highways were new

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In a flashback, the Chicago Tribune takes a look at the effects of the major highways that first opened in the region in the late 1950s and early 1960s:

Expressway construction changed the cityscape more than anything since the Great Fire of 1871. The fire gave builders a clean canvas. But the expressways had to be threaded through labyrinths of factories and bungalows. Those in the way were sacrificed: While expressways were still on the drawing board, they were expected to cost 9,000 families their homes, probably an underestimate…

Those concrete and asphalt ribbons provided a one-way ticket out of town. Even before the Congress (now Eisenhower) Expressway reached there, a developer was chopping up west suburban farmland for a development named in its honor. The Tribune noted Arthur McIntosh deliberately put Congress Highlands’ southern boundary on “a Du Page County feeder to the expressway.”…

Local movers and shakers had long envisioned freeing traffic from congested city streets. Yet some ordinary residents couldn’t believe it even when the bulldozers began to roll. “One man forced us to get an eviction order from the court because he said he had been reading about superhighways for years and thought the whole thing was a dream,” said Chicago’s housing co-coordinator in 1949…

Only the Southwest Expressway (today’s Stevenson) didn’t displace Chicagoans, being built atop an abandoned waterway, the Illinois and Michigan Canal. The Dan Ryan not only dramatically reduced the population in its route, but by paralleling a line of public housing, it reinforced segregated neighborhoods on the South Side. The Kennedy was rerouted around the backside of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, when Chicago’s Polish community complained the original plan would have placed it at the church’s front door.

This article illustrates the major changes that happened in many major American cities when highways that linked downtown areas to the future suburbs. But, the article hints that this wasn’t necessarily easy to do: people were displaced, neighborhoods were changed, political corruption occurred, and people battled about exactly where the highways should go. Today, they seem natural. In the 1950s, they were a big change.

This piece also seems to support the political economy view of urban growth and development. Highways didn’t just happen because people were clamoring to get to the suburbs for the cheaper land and houses. Rather, the fate of these highways were decided by wealthy businessmen and developers as well as politicians who saw opportunities. If people needed to be displaced, so be it. If highways could be used to separate the Black Belt from Bridgeport, so be it. If the jobs building the highways could be peddled into votes and connections, so be it. The example here of the DuPage developer is classic: now suburban land close to the highway was valuable.

Perhaps stories like these resonate more in Chicago since transportation plays such a big part in the city’s history and current makeup. Between being a railroad hub, having two busy airports, a port that connects the Great Lakes to the Mississippi (still a fairly large port though no longer as important), and a number of major interstates that run through or near the city, the effects of transportation changes matter.

What will the 2012 election look like if the public is dreading it?

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I saw the results of a recent Gallup poll that suggests Americans are not looking forward to the 2012 election:

With the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses serving as the kickoff of voting in the 2012 presidential election campaign, Americans would likely prefer to fast-forward to the end of the campaign than watch it unfold. Given a choice, 70% of Americans say they can’t wait for the campaign to be over, while 26% can’t wait for it to begin…

Nationally, there is little difference by party in feelings about the upcoming campaign — 67% of Democrats and 66% of Republicans can’t wait for the campaign to be over…

The greatest differences in feelings toward the campaign are by age. Senior citizens, who have seen more presidential elections than younger Americans, are least likely to be looking forward to the campaign, with 16% saying they can’t wait for it to begin. That compares with 27% or more of those in each of the younger age groups…

Importantly, despite their generally negative feelings toward the campaign, Americans are not necessarily going to tune it out completely, or decline to participate. The same poll finds that 57% of Americans have already given “quite a lot” of thought to the upcoming election, and 72% are at least somewhat enthusiastic about voting in next year’s election.

Several thoughts come to mind:

1. Does this make independent voters more important than ever as most people aren’t looking forward to it plus you already have a majority who has spent a lot of time thinking about it (and has made up their minds?)? Walmart moms, be prepared.

2. If you are the manager of a major candidate, what sort of campaign do you run? How do you not anger people or turn them off but also reach them? Might we get some innovative strategies to deal with this? Will people even respond positively to candidates who run against the system/current politicians/as outsiders to Washington?

3. Pundits like to suggest that Americans should be more involved in politics and exercise their right to vote. This poll, and others, suggest a number of Americans are dissatisfied with the actors and/or the system. How will this tension be resolved? More or better civics classes are not the answer.

4. Gallup doesn’t suggest this but could this dread be related to geographic area and wealth? One analysis suggests the majority of big campaign donations are coming from just a few areas around and in big cities.

5. It would be nice to have some context for this story. In recent history (in the post-World War II era), how often have Americans been really excited about upcoming elections?

Dancing sociology in Quebec

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I once searched YouTube for a statistics dance to show my statistics class and stumbled upon an admission’s video full of statistics based dances from a high school senior hopeful to get into Tufts. Somehow, I think her performance would be a little different than a new show in Quebec that is meant to interpret the scientific work of a political scientist/sociologist:

The acclaimed Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie (CLC) presents the world premiere of Les cheminements de l’influence (Pathways of Influence), a striking solo dance work created and performed by CLC co-Artistic Director Laurence Lemieux as a tribute to her father, eminent political scientist and sociologist Vincent Lemieux. With original music by Gordon Monahan, this new work runs February 15 – 25, 2012, the first official work to be presented at CLC’s new home, the Citadel,a new centre for contemporary dance.

Vincent Lemieux is Quebec’s foremost political scientist and sociologist, a visionary who unifies the practical and theoretical. According to The National Post, “some regard Mr. Lemieux as Quebec’s Nostradamus.” His daughter, Laurence Lemieux, is one of Canada’s most acclaimed dancers and a creator whose choreography – frequently danced by her husband (and CLC Co-Artistic Director) Bill Coleman and, most recently, their two children – is deeply personal yet beloved by audiences, and is often selected for “Top 10” lists by publications such as The Globe & Mail and Toronto’s NOW Magazine.

Her new piece is a graceful tribute to her father. Jumping from page to stage, she embodies his groundbreaking work with daring physicality and passion, contrasting the immediateness of the dancer’s body with a grand visual scale.

“I hope,” Lemieux says, “to retrace in dance some of the pathways he has travelled in his wide-ranging studies, to capture something of the spirit of his methodology – its scientific precision as well as its remarkable artistry. He researches ‘the Quebec people;’ my research takes me into the memories and passions of this one, particular Quebecois person.”

I can’t even imagine what this might look like…but I would be curious to see how an academic career translates into dance.

It might be a stretch but this reminds me of various tidbits I’ve seen here and there about expanding sociological analysis beyond the typical article or book paradigms. Video/documentaries is a very possible option but what about other forms of expression? Photography? Art? Dance? Music? Interactive websites? I imagine there are some really creative sociologists who could put something fascinating together. Why not have ASA allow some space for this and move beyond posters (which are often written documents tacked to a poster)?

Making sure the graph of mean age of marriage covers a broad enough period of history

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Two days ago, I noted a new report that said that fewer adult Americans, 51%,  are married than ever before. One of the markers of this trend is the rising mean age for a first marriage. But, a sociologist points out that it is important to have a broad enough context for the mean age of marriage:

But Philip N. Cohen, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, reminds us that using 1960 as a reference point can be misleading.

In 1960, the median age of first marriage was near a record low, having bottomed in about 1956. If you check out the trends going back to 1890, however, you get a much different picture…

“[T]he 1950s,” Professor Cohen writes, “doesn’t represent the ‘traditional’ family.”

The graph is pretty clear: the 1950s represent a clear dip in the mean age of marriage between 1890 and today. Suggesting there is a sharp rise since the 1960s in the mean age is not incorrect but it masks the bigger context.

This leads me to an interesting idea: while the 1960s are often considered an unusual decade and perhaps one whose reverberations are still being felt (consequences of foreign wars, sexual revolution, rise of youth culture, Baby Boomers, challenges to political authority, etc.), perhaps it is the 1950s that is the real unusual decade in the United States. The swift movement of people to the suburbs, a large crop of war veterans going back to school and starting families, an expanding economy, and relative peace (with the US as a clear superpower) represents an unusual period. Perhaps then the 1960s were simply the beginning of the unraveling of that “golden decade.”

Seeing traffic and congestion as a sign of success

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While some might generally consider traffic and congestion to be negative (see examples here and here), here is an alternative argument: traffic and congestion are one sign of urban success.

Congestion, in the urban context, is often a symptom of success.

If people enjoy crowded places, it seems a bit strange that federal and state governments continue to wage a war against traffic congestion. Despite many hundreds of billions dollars spent increasing road capacity, they’ve not yet won; thank God. After all, when the congestion warriors have won, the results aren’t often pretty. Detroit, for example, has lots of expressways and widened streets and suffers from very little congestion. Yet no one would hold up Detroit as a model.

After all, congestion is a bit like cholesterol – if you don’t have any, you die. And like cholesterol, there’s a good kind and a bad kind. Congestion measurements should be divided between through-traffic and traffic that includes local origins or destinations, the latter being the “good kind.” Travelers who bring commerce to a city add more value than someone just driving through, and any thorough assessment of congestion needs to be balanced with other factors such as retail sales, real estate value and pedestrian volume…

This doesn’t mean that cities should strive for congestion, but they should recognize that traffic is often a sign of dynamism. Moving vehicular traffic is obviously a necessary function, but by making it the only goal, cities lose out on the economic potential created by the crowds of people that bring life to a city.

Let me translate this argument into the suburban context in which I have studied. Most suburban communities would love to have thriving businesses within municipal limits. This brings in tax dollars, jobs, and a better image (a good place to do business, a vibrant place, etc.). But, for this to happen, this is going to require more people driving through and into the community. A typical NIMBY response to new development, particularly commercial property, is that it will increase traffic which threatens safety. There may be some truth to this but it is also about an image and whether the location is a residential space or something else. Additionally, many suburbanites assume traffic and congestion are city problems, not suburban problems, and therefore are unhappy when their mobility is more limited. A classic local example is Naperville: I’m not sure too many people in Naperville really desire having large parking garages in the downtown. At the same time, it is good that so many people want to come downtown and spend money. Ultimately, there are ways to limit this auto dependence and congestion in downtowns but you still need to plan for and accommodate the large number of cars.

All this suggests that there may be some contingencies regarding congestion:

1. There is a somewhere between not enough traffic and too much. These standards could be very different in different places. In quieter and smaller communities, I suspect the threshold is much lower. The character of a neighborhood or community is going to impact this decision. Perhaps there are even formulas that can predict this.

2. This is location dependent. Looking at congestion in a downtown area is very different than looking at traffic on collector roads or nearby interstates. Problems arise when transportation needs cross these location boundaries, say, when roads in a downtown are used to get to the other side of the community rather than to visit the vibrant downtown. The solutions for each location may be very different, and one size fits all policies may not be very effective.

Overall, it is unlikely that single suburbs or even small groups of suburbs can eliminate congestion and traffic on their own. It is not about getting rid of cars but rather successfully adapting spaces so that the cars are not overwhelming. We can think about ways to reduce congestion or ameliorate its occurrence in particular contexts, even recognizing that it may be a good sign.