Monthly Archives: September 2012

Editorial: to lower poverty rate in the US, we need to talk about it first

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An editorial in the Philadelphia Daily News suggests there is currently a big stumbling block in dealing with record poverty levels in the United States: no one is talking about it.

One argument that has gained currency is that the poor aren’t really poor, because they have refrigerators and cell phones. Here’s another: The worst economic downturn since the Great Depression doesn’t qualify as “circumstances beyond their control.” Instead, people who lose their jobs and can’t find others just aren’t looking hard enough. And the most shocking of all: To punish their parents, it’s OK to let children go hungry and suffer the health and educational ramifications of malnutrition.

That’s how some people think of poverty – if they think about it at all…

Yet politicians of all leanings just don’t want to talk about it, almost certainly taking their cues from the populace at large. In a recent study, the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting looked at six months of national political coverage and found that poverty was the subject of less than 0.2 percent of the stories – that is, only 17 out of 10,489.

In order to do something about poverty, we have to be able to recognize it. An organization sponsored by the Center for American Progress called “Half in Ten” (www.halfinten.org) has set a goal of halving the U.S. poverty rate in 10 years by putting it back on the national agenda. First step: “updating” Americans’ understanding of poverty, beginning with the way it is calculated. The current method – used for nearly a half-century – multiplies estimated food costs by three, which doesn’t take into account increased expenses such as housing, transportation and child care – and gives a much brighter picture than the actual reality.

Half in Ten is urging Americans to “tweet” the moderators of the presidential debates using the hashtag #talkpoverty to challenge the candidates on how they would reduce poverty in their first 100 days in office.

The modern era: fighting poverty through Twitter.

I’ve noted this issue before; the major political candidates don’t talk about poverty. They may talk about hardship and economic troubles but they tend to stick to middle-class dreams and helping Americans join this aspirational group. According to the New York Times, the word “poverty” was spoken at a rate of 3 per 25,000 words by Democrats and 5 per 25,000 words by Republicans. In contrast, the phrase “middle class” was used at a rate of 47 per 25,000 words by Democrats and 7 per 25,000 words by Republicans.

At the same time, I wonder if Joel Best’s writings about the possible problems with declaring war on social problems, such as poverty, apply here. How do you keep the momentum of a fifty year war going? How do you know when the US has “won” the war on poverty? One advantage of declaring war on a social problem is that it can draw media attention because of the implications of war. Yet, it sounds like the media isn’t paying much attention either.

Living in near poverty in the Washington D.C. suburbs

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The number of poor people in the suburbs is growing and the Washington Post takes a look at those just above the poverty line in the suburbs of Washington D.C.:

These are the folks hovering above the poverty line, just a few digits away from the cliff that drops them into the world of people we fret over and create government programs for.Poverty, in most of the cases we hear it discussed, means a household income of less than $23,000 for a family of four. But what if you make $25,000, $30,000 or even $40,000? Is that easy street?…

From 2010 to 2011, poverty rates jumped in Loudoun, Fairfax, Arlington and Prince William counties, the land of McMansions, gated communities and shiny, big-box stores.

The suburbs were built to accommodate prosperity and consumption, a life of big lawns, big cars and big dreams. It is a precipice so high that the drop — a missed mortgage that turns into a foreclosure, a repossessed car that results in a lost job — is dizzying.

Step into any thrift store and the pain is on display, right along with the used cake platters, tea sets and cocktail dresses nobody needs anymore.

A few thoughts on the full story:

1. The columnist uses an interesting term for this group living just above the poverty line: the pre-poor. Does this imply that they are inevitably on a path to poverty or could they also move upward out of this group with a new job or opportunity?

2. The story focuses primarily on thrift stores but assumedly there are other places where the pre-poor shop and gather? In other words, this sounds like an easy entree into this segment of the American populace but doesn’t give us much of the complex story of their lives.

3. Another angle on this would be to look at the social services available to those just above poverty. Are there local charities, religious organizations, and civic groups trying to help? Are these suburbs, places built for prosperity and yet seeing growing need for social services, able to help?

More evidence for having IRBs: sociologist finds that US Army released toxic cadmium into St. Louis air in the 1950s and 1960s

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A sociologist in St. Louis says she has discovered an unknown story involving the US Army releasing cadmium into the air in the 1950s.

The aerosol was sprayed from blowers installed on rooftops and mounted on vehicles. ”The Army claims that they were spraying a quote ‘harmless’ zinc cadmium sulfide,” says Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor, Professor of Sociology, St. Louis Community College. Yet Martino-Taylor points out, cadmium was a known toxin at the time of the spraying in the mid 50?s and mid 60?s. Worse, she says the aerosol was laced with a fluorescent additive – a suspected radiological compound – produced by U.S. Radium, a company linked to the deaths of workers at a watch factory decades before.

Martino-Taylor says thousands upon thousands of St. Louis residents likely inhaled the spray. ”The powder was milled to a very, very fine particulate level.  This stuff traveled for up to 40 miles.  So really all of the city of St. Louis was ultimately inundated by  the stuff.”

Martino-Taylor says she’s obtained documents from multiple federal agencies showing the government concocted an elaborate story to keep the testing secret. “There was a reason this was kept secret.  They knew that the people of St. Louis would not tolerate it.” She says part of the deception came from false news reports planted by government agencies.  “And they told local officials and media that they were going to test clouds under which to hide the city in the event of aerial attack.” Martino-Taylor says some of the key players in the cover-up were also members of the Manhattan Atomic Bomb Project and involved in other radiological testing across the United States at the time. “This was against all military guidelines of the day, against all ethical guidelines, against all international codes such as the Nuremberg Code.”

She says the spraying occurred between 1953 and 54 and again from 1963 to 65 in areas of North St. Louis and eventually in parts of South St. Louis. Martino-Taylor launched her research after hearing independent reports of cancers among city residents living in those areas at the time.

When students ask why we have Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and why it may seem they have researchers jump through a series of hoops, I remind them of stories like this. This experiment even took place after the establishment of the beginnings of the modern ethical guidelines for science  through the Nuremberg Code. It is not too long ago when the government and other organizations undertook silent experiments and violated two of the primary ethical principles sociologists and others hold to: do not harm participants and ensure that they are participating on a voluntary basis.

Another note: it sounds like these experiments were justified in the name of safety. The tests were conducted under the cover that the city needed to prepare for a possible bombing, presumably by Russia.

Gerson suggests we can’t solve social problems through individualism; we need to correct dysfuncational institutions

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Michael Gerson argues we can’t address America’s social problems through individualism but rather we need to help strengthen dysfunctional institutions:

While the Romney video was making news, I was reading some recent research by Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam. He recounts an interview with a woman given the fictional name of Mary Sue, who lives in a declining industrial town in Ohio. Mary Sue’s parents divorced when she was young. Her mother became a stripper and left for days at a time. Her stepmother beat her and confined her to a single room. Mary Sue told the interviewer that, for a time, her only friend had been a yellow mouse who shared the apartment.

Mary Sue went in and out of juvenile detention. One boyfriend burned her arms with cigarettes. Her current partner has two children by two other women.

Is such a story really explainable as a failure of personal responsibility? That seems both simplistic and callous. Putnam describes these social conditions as “depressingly typical” in America’s working class. He measures a number of growing gaps between poorer and more affluent Americans — gaps of parental time and investment, of religious and community involvement, of academic achievement — that widen a class divide and predict a “social mobility crash” for millions of Americans.

This crisis has a number of causes, including the collapse of working-class families, the flight of blue-collar jobs and the decay of working-class neighborhoods, which used to offer stronger networks of mentors outside the home. Perverse incentives in some government programs may have contributed to these changes, but this does not mean that shifting incentives can easily undo the damage. Removing a knife from a patient does not automatically return him to health. Whatever the economic and cultural causes, the current problem is dysfunctional institutions, which routinely betray children and young adults. Restoring a semblance of equal opportunity — promoting family commitment, educational attainment and economic advancement — will take tremendous effort and creative policy.

Gerson goes on to argue for a kind of conservatism that looks to improve civil society rather than retreat into a libertarian world.

A few thoughts:

1. Gerson brings up an important idea: simply removing unhelpful government programs doesn’t necessarily solve the larger social problem. In fact, there may be two issues at stake: a misguided program as well as the social problem. But simply doing nothing doesn’t necessarily rectify the problem either. For example, making certain kinds of discrimination illegal in the 1960s was a big step in the right direction. But, this didn’t immediately equalize the life chances for different groups, particularly those who had endured decades of legal discrimination. There is still work to be done on this front so simply acting like the new law or program has completely solved the problem is false.

2. Note that Gerson is not necessarily calling here for government to tackle all of these issues. Also, he brings up issues that tend to worry conservatives like the decline of the traditional family.

3. Is this what moderate Republicanism looks like?

Argument: use of the term McMansion in Australia usually about snobbery

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An Australian commentator argues the use of the term McMansion in his country is generally out of snobbery:

IS THERE any more snobbish word in the Australian vocabulary than ”McMansion”? This nasty term describes the big, new houses out in suburbs with names like Caroline Springs and Kellyville. McMansions, their nickname suggests, are the McDonald’s of housing – they’re super-sized, American and mass produced.

Australians build the largest new houses in the world. The average size of a new freestanding home is 243 square metres. That’s 10 per cent larger than the average new American home. Naturally our big houses have critics. Sustainability advocates say McMansions are bad for the environment. Yet there’s more going on here. Because even the most high-brow academic critiques of McMansions seem to focus less on the houses and more on the people who live in them…

That sort of sneering contempt is not uncommon. The word ”McMansion” is usually deployed not to appraise a type of house, but an entire way of life. It is all about culture – the inner city world trying to understand their strange, alien suburban cousins…

Even if you don’t put much stock in income statistics, the size of our houses is – by itself – evidence that Australia is well off. Prosperity is about more than GDP data. Money isn’t everything. Anybody who has lived crammed into too few rooms knows living standards and adequate space are closely related. In rich Australia it’s understandable that many people desire extra living and storage space.

This seems to bleed through in some of the American use of the term as well.

However, I’m not sure we should go the route this commentator suggests and welcome McMansions because they are a sign of our wealth and some individuals want to purchase them. While some do look at McMansions and McMansion dwellers with disdain, McMansions are also not inherently good. They are somewhat indicative of our the resources available in the United States and Australia (though wealthy societies could choose to spend this wealth in other ways) but there are certainly trade-offs in building McMansions, just as there are in building other kinds of structures. McMansions reflect our cultural values: we emphasize private space (even as family size is shrinking), the need for homes that are more than just dwellings (whether they are meant to impress or are to fit out psychological needs), and a suburban lifestyle which is an adaptation between city and country, is based around driving, gives homeowners a little bit of land and space, and is linked to ideas about the American (or Australian?) Dream and “making it” in life. We can discuss whether policies should limit McMansions but it seems that both the United States and Australia have made the choice to allow builders and homeowners to pursue larger homes.

Should oil reserves be used to build developments in “glittering cities”?

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A commentator looking at Venezuela and the use of the money from its oil reserves suggests oil money should be spent on development in “glittering cities”:

While oil has ushered in spectacular construction projects for glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world’s tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi, it’s brought relatively meager changes to Venezuela, which holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

Nearly 14 years after President Hugo Chavez took office, and despite the biggest oil bonanza in Venezuela’s history, there’s little outward sign of the nearly one trillion petrodollars that have flowed into the country.

It would be interesting to hear experts talk about whether the urban development projects in the Middle East are really the best use of money from natural resources. On one hand, the cities look impressive. Dubai is now on the map partly because of the Burj Kalifa. American universities and European museums want to locate in such new cities. The buildings are all so new and exciting. At least in appearance, these cities can now compete with the best big cities in the world. Going further, some would argue cities are the engines of innovation and growth so spending money there on infrastructure and facilities could go a long way. Similarly, glittering cities might the result of financial and economic power.

On the other hand, money spent on buildings and cities is money that could be spent on education, health care, the development of human capital, and sustainable projects that will outlive the oil reserves. Cities may only be as good as its workers and residents who can contribute to social, economic, and political life. Could glittering cities simply be facades that mask a host of underlying social ills papered over by mineral wealth? Money may be spent in urban centers and yet residents in slums and in more rural areas may be essentially forgotten. More broadly, does a city necessarily have to be “glittering” to be successful? Indeed, are there cities in the world that are clearly successful and offer a high standard of living but are not glittering such as the Scandinavian capitals?

Driverless cars will lead to increased worker productivity

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Dan Neil writes about the inevitability of driverless cars and brings up an interesting benefit: Americans will suddenly have more time on their hands.

The one brilliant part of the U.S. economic profile is productivity. It turns out, Americans are a little nutty when it comes to work.

If autonomy were fully implemented today, there would be roughly 100 million Americans sitting in their cars and trucks tomorrow, by themselves, with time on their hands. It would be, from an economist’s point of view, the Pennsylvania oil fields of man-hours, a beautiful gusher, a bonanza of reverie washing upon our shores.

In the history of human civilization, has there ever been a society to offer so much uninterrupted head space to so many? Europe’s medieval monastic tradition created scholars, true, but only a relative handful…

It’s possible that all these suddenly idle driver/passengers will waste their gift, texting, watching TV or worse. But many of them, like me, would beaver into work, happy to get a jump on the day.

And here’s the best part. I always get my best ideas in the car—in solitude, watching the unwinding of the road, hearing the thrum of the tires. You know that space, right?

Hurray – more time to work! Neil might be excited about this but I first think of all the opportunities for mixing the boundaries of home and work even further. Thinking more broadly, is productivity something we want to continue to chase as a society? Do Americans really need to be working more?

On the other hand, this could be a big boon for several sectors. Think about media companies: Americans would then have on average something like 40-60 minutes more per day to consume television shows, websites, podcasts, music, etc. Or perhaps it could give rise to all sorts of services and car add-ons; I’m thinking of the Honda Odyssey commercials from a while back showing moms going to the minivan to relax and get a facial.

 

Brookings: who reaches middle-class affected by race, family’s social class, gender

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A new report from the Brookings Institution examines who makes it to the middle class through achieving a number of benchmarks. A summary of the findings:

The study breaks life down into stages (for instance, adolescence) and gives benchmarks for each of those stages (in that case, graduation from high school with a grade-point average above 2.5, no criminal convictions and no involvement in a teenage pregnancy).

They then studied children over time, analyzing whether they met those benchmarks and projecting whether they would make it to the middle class — defined as the top three quintiles of income — by age 40.

Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that success seems to beget success — meeting each benchmark makes one more likely to meet the next. Moreover, the effect accumulates. A child who meets all the criteria from birth to adulthood has an 81 percent chance of being middle class. A child who meets none has only a 24 percent chance…

Race matters as well. About two in five black adolescents met the benchmark of graduating from high school with a decent grade point average, no children and no criminal record by the age of 19. About two in three white adolescents did.

And from the introduction of the Brookings report:

The reality is that economic success in America is not purely meritocratic. We don’t have as much equality of opportunity as we’d like to believe, and we have less mobility than some other developed countries. Although cross-national comparisons are not always reliable, the available data suggest that the U.S. compares unfavorably to Canada, the Nordic countries, and some other advanced countries. A recent study shows the U.S. ranking 27th out of 31 developed countries in measures of equal opportunity.

People do move up and down the ladder, both over their careers and between generations, but it helps if you have the right parents. Children born into middle-income families have a roughly equal chance of moving up or down once they become adults, but those born into rich or poor families have a high probability of remaining rich or poor as adults. The chance that a child born into a family in the top income quintile will end up in one of the top three quintiles by the time they are in their forties is 82 percent, while the chance for a child born into a family in the bottom quintile is only 30 percent. In short, a rich child in the U.S. is more than twice as likely as a poor child to end up in the middle class or above.

This shouldn’t be too surprising: despite the American cultural emphasis on working hard and getting ahead (a story told by both political parties at their 2012 conventions), certain traits increase the likelihood of achieving a middle-class life. Hard work only goes so far; other social factors such as family background, race, and gender make a difference.

I am intrigued by how the report defines the middle-class life stages as defined by the Social Genome Model (p.3-4 of the report):

1. Family Formation. Born at normal birth weight to a non-poor, married mother with at least a high school diploma.

2. Early childhood. Acceptable pre-reading and math skills AND behavior generally school-appropriate.

3. Middle childhood. Basic reading and math skills AND Social-emotional skills.

4. Adolescence. Graduates from high school w/GPA >= 2.5 AND Has not been convicted of a crime nor become a parent.

5. Transition to adulthood. Lives independently AND Receives a college degree or has a family income >= 250% of the poverty level.

6. Adulthood. Reaches middle class (family income at least 300% of the poverty level).

Why exactly these stages?

Hit by the recession: “Architecture revenue down 40% since 2008”

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Amongst those hit hard by the economic crisis and the downturn in the housing and building industries, don’t overlook architects:

Between 2008 and 2011, gross revenue at architecture firms fell from over $44 billion to $26 billion. More than 28 percent of positions disappeared…

Architecture is dependent on construction, which is notoriously cyclical – usually three or four times more volatile than the market, says Kermit Baker, the AIA’s chief economist and a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. “It’s been devastating,” he says. “Construction activity has been down 50 or 60 percent – architecture has a long tradition of trying to survive the construction cycle, and it’s extremely challenging because architecture firms are by and large small- and medium-size firms.”…

But the highly competitive market has also encouraged innovation. The percentage of architectural firms that employ LEED-accredited professionals has doubled since 2008, from one-third of all firms to two-thirds. Baker, who helped prepare the report, says sustainable design is a way for firms to distinguish themselves in a crowded field. But it also demonstrates a larger, permanent shift toward environmental awareness…

Particularly in small practices, architecture firms are expanding their range, fostering talents in interior design, construction, or environmental planning. Again, this multidisciplinary shift reflects a desire to compete in a crowded market, but it also speaks to a larger trend toward “one-stop-shop” firms where clients can find everything they need. Progressives have been advocating closer contact between design professionals for ages, and the recession has made it pay off.

Even before the recession, relatively few homes were constructed with the aid of architects.

Thinking more broadly, economic prosperity and hardship leads to changes in the more cultural aspects of society. In response to these changes, architects have expanded into two areas, sustainability and design, which could lead to different kinds of buildings in the years to come.

Sociological concepts that help explain why some companies are telling employees to avoid work email at home

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Some companies are telling their employees to not check their work email at home:

In recent years, one in four companies have created similar rules on e-mail, both formal and informal, according to a recent survey by the Society for Human Resource Management. Firms trying out these policies include Volkswagen, some divisions of PricewaterhouseCoopers and shipping company PBD Worldwide.

For the vast majority of companies and federal offices, the muddying of work and personal time has had financial advantages. Corporations and agencies, unable to hire, are more productive than ever thanks in part to work-issued smartphones, tablets and other mobile technology, economists say…

“There is no question e-mail is an important tool, but it’s just gone overboard and encroached in our lives in a way where employees were feeling like it was harder and harder to achieve a good balance,” said Robert Musslewhite, chief executive of the Advisory Board, a health and education research and software-services firm.

Official numbers show just one in 10 people brings work home, according to a Labor Department report in 2010. But economists say that figure is wildly conservative because it counts only those who are clocking in those hours for extra pay.

Three sociological ideas shed some light on this:

1. This increased level of stress might be due to the mixing of the front-stage and back-stage performances of employees. Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote about these two settings, the first where we play a role, in this case as employee, and this requires emotional and physical energy. In the latter setting, we can let down our guard. Checking work email at home means this back-stage setting is interrupted.

2. This reminds me of the work by sociologist Christena Nippert-Eng on the symbolic boundaries between home and work. We place home and work in certain mental categories and so crossing these boundaries can create some difficulties. Sociologist Ray Oldenberg suggested another way around these two symbolic boundaries: we need “third places” like coffee shops and pubs where workers can relax and interact with other citizens in settings distinct from work and home.

3. A few centuries ago, more average citizens may have mixed home and work as people worked in their homes or very near by. It wasn’t until the industrial era that more employees had to travel further to their workplaces, creating a larger physical difference between home and work that also translated into more symbolic difference. Perhaps this story about email is a reminder that at this point in history we are swinging back to mixing  home and work because of technology that transcends physical boundaries.