Monthly Archives: July 2012

Thinking about Americans losing the ability to work with their hands

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A New York Times essay argues we are losing something as Americans because fewer people can work skillfully with their hands:

“In an earlier generation, we lost our connection to the land, and now we are losing our connection to the machinery we depend on,” says Michael Hout, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “People who work with their hands,” he went on, “are doing things today that we call service jobs, in restaurants and laundries, or in medical technology and the like.”

That’s one explanation for the decline in traditional craftsmanship. Lack of interest is another. The big money is in fields like finance. Starting in the 1980s, skill in finance grew in stature, and, as depicted in the news media and the movies, became a more appealing source of income…

Craft work has higher status in nations like Germany, which invests in apprenticeship programs for high school students. “Corporations in Germany realized that there was an interest to be served economically and patriotically in building up a skilled labor force at home; we never had that ethos,” says Richard Sennett, a New York University sociologist who has written about the connection of craft and culture…

As for craftsmanship itself, the issue is how to preserve it as a valued skill in the general population. Ms. Milkman, the sociologist, argues that American craftsmanship isn’t disappearing as quickly as some would argue — that it has instead shifted to immigrants. “Pride in craft, it is alive in the immigrant world,” she says.

I don’t doubt that the ability to produce craftmenship is worthwhile, particularly if one is a homeowner. But I wonder about the larger value of working with one’s hands. Why can’t using a mouse or a controller be considered “working with one’s hands”? Of course, it fits in a literal sense but there is a difference in production and skills. Yet, it still requires effort and finesse to be able to effectively utilize the newest machines. Perhaps we have swapped our traditional toolbox for a “digital toolbox.”

If the world is moving toward an information and service economy, is this necessarily bad? This reminds me of a piece in The Atlantic months ago about a contest where programmers had to try to put together a computer that could converse like a human. Working with tools is not uniquely human but thinking and reasoning might be. Does this make working with our hands less valuable compared to other possible activities?

What happens when you let Boston residents crowdsource neighborhood boundaries

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Here is a fascinating online experiment: let residents of a city, in this case, Boston, illustrate how they would draw neighborhood boundaries. Here are the conclusions of the effort thus far:

Although we talk a lot about boundaries, this post included, the maps here should also remind us that neighborhoods are not defined by their edges—essentially, what is outside the neighborhood—but rather by their contents. And it’s not just a collection of roads and things you see on a map; it’s about some shared history, activities, architecture, and culture. So while the neighborhood summaries above rely on edges to describe the maps, let’s also think about the areas represented by the shapes and what’s inside them. What are the characteristics of these areas? Why are they the shapes that they are? Why is consensus easy or difficult in different areas? What is the significance of the differences in opinion between residents of a neighborhood and people outside the neighborhood?

We’ll revisit those questions in further detail in future posts, and also generate maps of other facets of the data. Next up: areas of overlap between neighborhoods. Here we’ve looked neighborhood-by-neighborhood at how much people agree, so now let’s map those zones that exhibit disagreement. Meanwhile, thanks so much for all the submissions for this project; and if you haven’t drawn some neighborhoods, what’s your problem? Get on it!

This gets at a recurring issue for urban sociologists: how to best define communities or neighborhoods. The best option with data is to use Census boundaries such as tracts, block groups, blocks, and perhaps zip codes. This data is collected regularly, in-depth, and can be easily downloaded. However, these boundaries are crude approximations of culturally defined neighborhoods. People on the ground have little knowledge about what Census tract they live in (though this is easy to figure out online).

So if Census definitions are not the best for the on-the-ground experience, what is left? This crowdsourcing project is a modern way of doing what some researchers have done: ask the residents themselves and also observe what happens. What streets are not crossed? Which features or landmarks define a neighborhood? Who “belongs” where? What are typical activities in different places? Of course, this is a much messier process than working with clearly defined and reliable Census data but it illustrates a key aspect about neighborhoods: they are continually changing and being redefined by their own residents and others.

Myron Orfield on how to help keep the suburbs, like those of Chicago, diverse

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Myron Orfield is known for his efforts to argue for more comprehensive metropolitan cooperation and planning. In this piece at Atlantic Cities, Orfield explains how to help the suburbs remain diverse:

Yet, while integrated suburbs represent great hope, they face serious challenges to their prosperity and stability. In America, integrated communities have a hard time staying integrated for extended periods. Neighborhoods that were more than 23 percent non-white in 1980 were more likely to become predominately non-white (more than 60 percent non-white) during the next 25 years than to remain integrated. Illegal discrimination — in the form of steering by real estate agents, mortgage lending and insurance discrimination, subsidized housing placement, and racial gerrymandering of school attendance boundaries — is causing rapid racial change and economic decline…

By 2010, 17 percent of suburbanites lived in predominantly non-white suburbs, communities that were once integrated but are now more troubled than their central cities, with fewer prospects for renewal. Tipping or resegregation (moving from a once all-white or stably integrated neighborhood to an all non-white neighborhood), while common, is not inevitable. Stable integration is possible. However, it does not happen by accident. It is the product of clear race-conscious strategies, hard work, and political collaboration among local governments.

Critical to stabilizing these suburbs are the following strategies:

  • Creation of local stable integration plans with fair housing ordinances, incentives for pro-integrative home loans, cooperative efforts with local school districts, and financial support of pro-integrative community-based organizations.
  • Greater enforcement of existing civil rights laws including the Fair Housing Act, especially the sections related to racial steering, mortgage lending discrimination and location of publicly subsidized affordable housing.
  • Adoption of regional strategies to limit exclusionary zoning and require affluent suburbs to accommodate their fair share of affordable housing.
  • Adoption of metropolitan-scale strategies to promote more integrated schools.

This tipping point phenomenon goes back to the research of Thomas Schelling who identified points where residents will start leaving a neighborhood with an influx of certain new residents. Research suggests that whites start leaving more diverse neighborhoods when the neighborhood becomes roughly 10-20% non-white.

It’s too bad Orfield doesn’t go further with this and talk about suburbs where this has successfully taken place. In his book American Metropolitics, Orfield talks primarily about inner-ring suburbs that now have more diverse populations. The Chicago metropolitan region maps included in this post are fascinating: between 2000 and 2010, a number of suburbs became more diverse. I’ve included the 2010 map from the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity below:

Some quick observations:

1. The diverse suburbs have moved far beyond just the inner-ring suburbs.

2. The south and west suburbs are most diverse. There are a number of African-American suburbs just south of Chicago and the diverse population west of Chicago is primarily Latino with growing numbers of Asians.

3. The wealthier North Shore suburbs are the largest pocket of predominantly white suburbs though there are a number of these white suburbs sprinkled throughout the region. It is interesting to watch how these suburbs adapt to the growing diversity around them.

4. The most diverse suburbs appear to be ones with cheaper housing and more manufacturing and service jobs. There are some wealthier more diverse suburbs such as Oak Brook but I suspect the diversity in these suburbs is not also class diversity.

So Orfield’s four recommendations would help preserve this map and even increase diversity? Without much metropolitan cooperation, the Chicago suburbs have become more diverse. Perhaps Orfield might argue the suburbs would be even more diverse if metropolitan efforts had been undertaken. However, these maps obscure several important features such as social class and availability of nearby jobs.

A good definition of a McMansion: Scott Skiles’ suburban Milwaukee home

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Since I occasionally criticize the improper use of the term McMansion (see this recent post arguing that the 90,000 square foot home at the center of the film Versailles is way beyond McMansion territory), I might as well also point out when the term is used well. Take, for example, this description of Milwaukee Buck’s coach Scott Skiles’ home:

Scott Skiles was always a smallish NBA player but he has a very large house. His Mequon domicile boasts 4,728 square feet (nearly four times bigger than the average single family home in the city of Milwaukee) and five bathrooms. Plenty of places to shower off that sweat after a grueling practice…

Meanwhile he is still living in Mequon-styled splendor in a home that could hardly be less urban. To measure this, we do a walkability score (from walkscore.com) that calculates distance to the closest school, coffee house, grocery store, etc. as the crow flies and from the site’s “street smart” score, which does this calculation based on the walking distance on local streets. We also look at the distance to Milwaukee’s City Hall; suffice to say, for Skiles it’s no slam dunk.

The Rundown

  • Style: Single-family – Tudor/Provincial architecture
  • Location: Stonefields neighborhood – Mequon, WI
  • Walk Score: 12 out of 100
  • Street Smart Walk Score: 3 out of 100
  • Transit Score: Not Available
  • Size: 4,732 sq ft
  • Year Built: 1997
  • Assessed Value: $1,236,700 (2011)
  • List Price: $1,475,000
  • Currently listed: Yes, with Realty Executives – Integrity [Listing]
  • 4 bedrooms
  • 3-car garage
  • 5 total full baths
  • 13 total rooms

According to the typical usage of the term McMansion, here is how Skiles’ home meets the criteria:

1. It is a large house of over 4,700 square feet. Interestingly, it has more bathrooms than bedrooms. I would guess there is some really large family/great room space in this house. I’m not sure what Scott Skiles’ height, small by NBA standards but fairly tall for the population at large, has to do with it…

2. The walkability score is quite low, suggesting that it is in a relatively isolated suburban neighborhood. In other words, it is not really possible to walk in or out of the house to locations outside the neighborhood. The implication could be that this is another fairly anonymous suburb where neighbors don’t know each other and people hunker down in front of their TVs.

3. There are some pictures of the home in this story. The house does have a number of gables and the driveway is quite large and dominates this particular exterior photo.

4. The house is pretty expensive and built during some of the McMansion boom years (1997).

According to the four criteria I identified that are typically used for defining McMansions, this particular usage meets at least two out of the four: it is a big (and expensive) house associated with suburban sprawl. It may even qualify as a poorly designed home though it is difficult to know for sure with these six pictures. It does not appear to qualify as a relatively larger home

I suspect that many athletes and head coaches live in homes that would qualify as McMansions…

Only 4% of Americans make it from the bottom to the top in income

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A recent report from Pew suggests the rags-to-riches story is uncommon in American life:

While the U.S. is known as the land of opportunity — where everyone has an equal chance to succeed — one’s family’s socioeconomic status can impede success. A report from Pew’s Economic Mobility Project, a study assessing the health and status of the American dream, found that people raised in low-­income families often stay in the same economic bracket as their parents. Those raised in higher-income families stay up.

While 84 percent of Americans have higher family incomes than their parents, only 4 percent of those in lower-income families leaped to the top. The rags-to-riches story, the report said, happens in movies, but rarely in reality.

This isn’t the first source to argue this.

However, I wonder if this 4% really differs from what is displayed in American culture. How many books, movies, magazines, songs, and more suggest a rags-to-riches story? Many people have heard the name of Horatio Alger and his writings but how many American stories really follow this theme? How much does it differ from other cultures? If 84% of Americans do indeed have higher incomes than their parents, couldn’t there be some truth in cultural stories that depict “moving up” but not becoming fabulously wealthy? There would be ways to do a comprehensive study of American stories and media output to see how prevalent the “rags to riches” story really is but it would take a lot of work and simply counting numbers doesn’t easily translate into the impact a small amount of stories could have.

US exurban population grew 60% between 2000 and 2010

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The fastest growing area in the United States between 2000 and 2010 were exurbs:

Between 2000 and 2010, the total U.S. population grew about 10 percent, from 281 million to 309 million. Over that same time, the exurban population grew by more than 60 percent, from about 16 million to almost 26 million people, according to the analysis. As this chart shows, rates of growth are significantly higher in exurban areas than in more urban or densely populated areas.

A new interactive map from the Urban Institute shows how the growth rates in exurban areas have been higher – and in some cases much higher – than the growth rates in their corresponding metropolitan areas. The map is based on an analysis by U.S. Census Bureau researchers Todd Gardner and Matthew Marlay, who looked at census data from 2000 and 2010, and American Community Survey data from 2005 through 2009. Their data is also available in a sortable table.

The exurbs of Las Vegas, for example, saw an average annual growth rate of 17.2 percent between 2000 and 2010, while the metropolitan area as a whole had an average growth rate of just 3.6 percent. Phoenix’s exurban growth rate was 14.7 percent during that time, compared to its metro-wide rate of 2.6 percent. Omaha’s exurban rate of 11.9 percent also outpaced its metro-wide rate of 1.2 percent. Ninety-six of the 98 most populous metropolitan areas saw higher growth rates in the exurbs than in the metro areas as a whole between 2000 and 2010…

But it wasn’t all just pre-crash exurban booming. Some metro areas continued to see their exurban populations grow between 2007 and 2010, after the crash and through the recession. From 2007 to 2010, metropolitan areas grew about 2.4 percent, while exurban areas grew by 13 percent. Some exurbs even out-performed their pre-recession selves. “In 22 of the largest 100 metros, the average annual growth rate in the exurbs from 2007 to 2010 was higher than that of the previous seven years,” the researchers write.

As you might expect, the majority of the fastest growing exurban areas were in the South and West.

By definition, the exurbs are on the metropolitan fringe. However, once they reach a certain population or development moves past them, they are no longer really the exurbs as further out communities then take up the label. How long does the “average” exurb last before it simply becomes a suburb? I suspect this might differ city by city as they expand at different rates. For example, the cities of the Northeast and Midwest have a longer history and much of their explosive growth has already concluded.

The world of McDonalds, McQuarks, and McMansions

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Wired has a few recent pieces that are related to McMansions. First, an “Alt Text” piece parodies other “theoretical particles” that might follow the recent Higgs-Boson news:

McQuark

This subatomic particle is found in all McDonald’s food, and is the reason that all the menu offerings — including the burgers, shakes and dipping sauces — taste “McDonaldy,” as if they were all just carved out of a big lump of McSubstance. Currently, the McQuark is the universe’s only trademarked subatomic particle, although Motorola, maker of the Photon smartphone, is attempting to gain traction against Apple’s battery of lawsuits by patenting actual photons.

Wired‘s Matt Simon follows up and defines McMansions:

The most widely used of these pejoratives is McMansions. These are the quickly produced cookie-cutter homes that some say lack taste.

It would be interesting to hear more from McDonald’s about how they feel about the expanding usage of such terms, particularly McMansion. According to Wikipedia, McDonalds was not too happy about the term “McJobs”:

The term “McJob” was added to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary in 2003, over the objections of McDonald’s. In an open letter to Merriam-Webster, Cantalupo denounced the definition as a “slap in the face” to all restaurant employees, and stated that “a more appropriate definition of a ‘McJob’ might be ‘teaches responsibility.'” Merriam-Webster responded that “[they stood] by the accuracy and appropriateness of [their] definition.”

On 20 March 2007, the BBC reported that the UK arm of McDonald’s planned a public petition to have the OED’s definition of “McJob” changed. Lorraine Homer from McDonald’s stated that the company feels the definition is “out of date and inaccurate”. McDonald’s UK CEO, Peter Beresford, described the term as “demeaning to the hard work and dedication displayed by the 67,000 McDonald’s employees throughout the UK”. The company would prefer the definition to be rewritten to “reflect a job that is stimulating, rewarding … and offers skills that last a lifetime.”…

According to Jim Cantalupo, former CEO of McDonald’s, the perception of fast-food work being boring and mindless is inaccurate, and over 1,000 of the men and women who now own McDonald’s franchises began behind the counter.Because McDonald’s has over 400,000 employees and high turnover, Cantalupo’s contention has been criticized as being invalid, working to highlight the exception rather than the rule.

In 2006, McDonald’s undertook an advertising campaign in the United Kingdom to challenge the perceptions of the McJob. The campaign, developed by Barkers Advertising and supported by research conducted by Adrian Furnham, professor of psychology at University College London, highlighted the benefits of working for the organization, stating that they were “Not bad for a McJob”. So confident were McDonald’s of their claims that they ran the campaign on the giant screens of London’s Piccadilly Circus.

Instead of trying to change or block the definition, why doesn’t McDonald’s try to introduce its version of a “Mc-” term that it can then work to define? Of course, such things can be quickly turned around on the Internet but McDonald’s has plenty of resources and reach. I’m sure they could develop a positive version and there are still plenty of people going to their restaurants…

Signs of the “demographic train wreck” in retirement colonies in Florida

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One commentator suggests the expansion of retirement in Florida hints at larger demographic changes in the United States:

“There is a demographic train wreck coming that we are not really addressing nationally or in Florida,” says Sean Snaith, director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Competitiveness.Over the next 20 years, the number of adults over 62 in the U.S. will double to 80 million, as the largest generation in American history retires. A demographic model that once looked like a pyramid, with a relatively small number of seniors with lots of younger people to support them, now more closely resembles a bobble-head doll. Right now in the U.S., four working age adults support each retiree. In 20 years, that ratio will slip to three to one nationally — and two to one in Florida…

Yet after years of stagnant population growth, Florida is adding new residents again, especially in those areas where it is growing gray. According to projections from Florida’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research, more than half of the five million migrants expected to flow into the state over the next 18 years will be 60 or older. This elderly population boom, fueled by the retirement of the Baby Boomers, the biggest generation in U.S. history, will profoundly change the face of Florida from a state that is simply very old, to a state with one of the oldest populations on the planet.

If it seems like there are a lot of wrinkled faces crowding the aisles at the Publix grocery store in Boca Raton now, just wait. By 2030, one in four Floridians will be older than 65, up from one in six today, with the 85-plus set the fastest-growing group, according to projections…

“Basically you are asking a bunch of old retired rich white people to vote for school bonds that benefit immigrant Latino kids,” says Jennifer Hochschild, a Harvard University professor who studies the intersection of politics, immigration and education. “This is a potential political disaster.”

It will be fascinating to see how this plays out. Currently, it sounds like developers have figured out there is quite a market for such retirement communities. I have wondered why these haven’t seem to have caught on in the same scalein more northern, even considering the weather.

Should retirees have the right or make the possibly wrong choice for the larger society by moving into more isolated communities of people their own age? I’m sure there are class and race differences present here as well – not everyone has the resources to move to Florida in their golden years. What happens when all of these older residents can no longer live in these communities and require more care?

Summer break widens achievement gap

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Summer break may be welcomed by children but research shows that it contributes greatly to the achievement gap between students of different backgrounds:

Consider, first, the evidence for the summer fade effect. Taken together, a variety of studies indicate that students’ academic skills atrophy during the summer months by an amount equivalent to what they learn in a third of a school year, according to a review by Harris Cooper, a professor of education at Duke University, and several co-authors.

This deterioration, furthermore, varies substantially by income and race, and its impact persists even past childhood. Barbara Heyns, a sociologist at New York University who studied Atlanta schoolchildren in the late 1970s, found that although academic gains during the school year were not substantially correlated with income, summer decline was.

Subsequent studies have replicated the finding. Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle and Linda Olson of Johns Hopkins University, for example, found that the summer fade can largely explain why the gap in skills between children on either side of the socioeconomic divide widens as students progress through elementary school. Children from all backgrounds learn at similar rates during the school year, but each summer students of high socioeconomic status continue to learn while those of low socioeconomic status fall behind.

The impact is felt even years later. The learning differences that begin in grade school “substantially account” for differences by socioeconomic status in high-school graduation rates and in four-year college attendance, Alexander and his co-authors report.

This article adds some more information:

Many low-income kids actually make great progress in school from August to June, only to see much of it wiped away by an idle summer, he says. “We need to get over ourselves a little bit over our idyllic view of what summer is and what it’s supposed to be,” he adds.

A 2007 study by Johns Hopkins University researchers found that by the time students enter high school, “summer learning loss” accounts for roughly two-thirds of the nation’s achievement gap in reading between poor and middle-class students.

If the evidence is clear, how long until more districts go to reduced summer breaks or year-round school? Overcoming the culture of summer break could be difficult to do. Also, might we have a situation where wealthier districts continue summer break while less well-off districts try to combat this summer achievement decline?

Robert Shiller suggests economists should be more connected to sociology, other disciplines

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Economist Robert Shiller suggests the field of economics should be more connected to other social sciences like sociology:

Unlike many economists who seem unaware that their discipline has lost much of its credibility in recent years, Shiller is appropriately distraught at the seeming disconnect between economics and real-world social concerns.

“My own university, Yale, used to have a department of sociology, economics, and Government,” Shiller told me. “And in 1927 they split them into three departments. I think that was a momentous institutional change — it allowed economics to be cut off from other disciplines. Now they’re in separate buildings. You have to walk some distance. It’s utterly amazing to me how rarely economists quote the greats in psychology or sociology. Maybe they’re read them, but they’re not in their active mind.”

Shiller makes a powerful case that, while recent scandals make it easy to forget, financial innovation has done a lot of social good. As as an example he cites the creation of insurance. Because of it, almost everyone — not just the rich — can bounce back after an accident, fire, theft, or other calamity. In the past, such hardships could financially ruin a family forever.

Some interesting history here. Compared to the natural sciences, the social sciences have a relatively short history. It was only in the early 1900s that disciplines like sociology began to emerge in their own right.

From a sociologist’s point of view, it seems incomplete to only examine financial principles and transactions without the broader understanding of social motivations, interactions, and life. I wonder if sociologists wouldn’t argue that sociology encompasses more of the other social sciences than economics or psychology do, harkening back to Comte’s idea of sociology as the “queen of the sciences.”