Category Archives: Sociology

Societies may not want women to fight in wars – until they are desparately needed

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Here is an interesting piece about women soldiers in history, particularly focusing on their participation in World War II when their countries needed them. Here is part of the argument:

The girls of Stalingrad weren’t the only women to inspire shock and awe in World War II. Great Britain, the United States, and other combatants put hundreds of thousands of females in uniform; the Soviet Union alone recruited roughly a million, sending many into combat as tank commanders, snipers, and pilots. Desperation, not egalitarian ideals, drove these mobilizations; there simply weren’t enough men to fight in history’s largest conflagration…

In many ways, Panetta’s decision is simply a recognition that women are already fighting in combat. The United States has deployed nearly 290,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade. More than 140 have died, many killed by insurgents. With the blurry front lines of modern warfare, even women assigned to noncombat roles sometimes wind up in battle. In 2005, assigned to a protection detail for a military convoy, Army National Guard sergeant Leigh Ann Hester landed in a firefight with Afghanistan insurgents. Jumping from her Humvee, she ran to a ditch where several Americans were pinned down and about to be taken hostage. Opening fire with her M-4, she held off the insurgents, killing three and helping to rescue the men. Hester became the first woman to receive a Silver Star for a direct engagement with the enemy.

Still, Panetta’s decision will be fought hard. Citing reports of sexual harassment in the ranks, some officials worry that women will disrupt the cohesion crucial to combat unit. They also argue that females physically can’t handle the duty.

IN THE END, some people will never accept women in battle—at least, that is, until women are needed.

It strikes me that “normal” social roles can change quite a bit under altered circumstances such as war. So how much is this new directive in the United States allowing women in combat is driven by a need at the front lines? Does this tell us more about the larger capabilities of the US military than changing social norms regarding gender?

More companies hiring through internal referrals, online applications carry a stigma

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This might help explain why the ranks of long-term unemployed have risen: more companies are finding new employees through referrals from current employees.

The trend, experts say, has been amplified since the end of the recession by a tight job market and by employee networks on LinkedIn and Facebook, which can help employers find candidates more quickly and bypass reams of applications from job search sites like Monster.com.

Some, like Ernst & Young, the accounting firm, have set ambitious internal goals to increase the proportion of hirings that come from internal referrals. As a result, employee recommendations now account for 45 percent of nonentry-level placements at the firm, up from 28 percent in 2010…

The company’s goal is 50 percent. Others, such as Deloitte and Enterprise Rent-A-Car, have begun offering prizes like iPads and large-screen TVs in addition to traditional cash incentives for employees who refer new hires.

This sounds like a sort of Granovetter social network job hunt run amok: companies are looking for ways to minimize bad hires but in doing so, they are relying more and more on their current employees which freezes out people outside these social networks. But, it also suggests a job hunting strategy beyond Internet sites: people looking for work should look to impress their contacts who are currently working. This could be helpful to a lot of job searchers as it would cut down on online applications, cover letters, and the “black hole” (as it is called in the article) where applicants get very little feedback.

Here is a little bit about the advantages of companies hiring referred employees:

Referral programs carry important benefits for big companies. Besides avoiding hefty payouts to recruiters, referred employees are 15 percent less likely to quit, according to Giorgio Topa, one of the authors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York study.

Social networks improve business efficiency…but might also leave certain people out in the cold.

Considering how to better connect Chicago’s “Cultural Mile”

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Chicago Tribune arts critic Chris Jones suggests Chicago’s “cultural mile” is not connected well:

Like many such districts, congressional and otherwise, the Chicago Cultural Mile is an inherently artificial entity — Chicago self-evidently has many a cultural mile — designed to promote specific business and nonprofit interests and, of course, designed not to impinge on the jurisdiction of others. The reason for the weird turns is to link such big lakefront museums as the Field Museum of Natural History in the “mile” along with such Michigan Avenue anchors as the Art Institute, the Spertus center and Millennium Park. John W. McCarter Jr., the former president of the Field, joined the board of the nonprofit Chicago Cultural Mile Association last week along with Frank P. Novel of Metropolitan Capital Bank & Trust. The association, a hitherto snoozey but apparently growing nonprofit, also announced the hiring of its first full-time executive director, Sharene Shariatzadeh.

Let’s stipulate that the weird trajectory of the Chicago Cultural Mile is indicative of a problem in cultural Chicago, which McCarter knows as well as anyone: the continued lack of a graceful, logical curve (be it path, rail or road) to get visitors from Michigan Avenue to the steps of the Field Museum and the Adler Planetarium in a way that does not confound the visitors. Some variation of a graceful curve — as distinct from a counter-intuitive, traffic-dodging series of right-angled turns on streets with a surfeit of concrete — is needed. There are many reasons for the current financial duress at the Field, but one under-acknowledged factor is the renovation of Soldier Field, which made the museum seem more of its own island, far more distant, far harder to reach, if only in people’s heads.

But that’s not a reason for the Cultural Mile to leave Michigan Avenue.

Motor Row, its natural destination, sits right next to the McCormick Place convention center, a crucial economic generator that was built without an obvious emotional link to its city — a disdain for urban context that extracts a heavy price. Fixing up Motor Row is the best way to change that. As the Tribune reported last fall, things are already happening: The Seattle-based food-circus hybrid known as Teatro ZinZanni is eyeing the ‘hood for its long-anticipated Chicago branch. The band Cheap Trick is planning a venue and museum. There is talk of hotels and restaurants. A nearby stop on the Green Line is coming.

Jones is suggesting there are three major issues at stake here:

1. The first issue is that there is not a coherent physical connection between these spaces. They exist in proximity to each other but there is not public space that would encourage visitors to travel between them. This is an urban planning issue.

2. The second issue is marketing and selling this stretch as a coherent grouping. Even without a good layout, how many visitors to Chicago know this grouping exists? While the northern end of Michigan Avenue, north of the Chicago River, is well known and visited, this area could use more promotion.

3. A third concern is that this cultural mile could be still expanded to include interesting existing places. As Jones notes, McCormick Place doesn’t really interact with the nearby area even as it attracts thousands of visitors so a nearby site that would attract visitors could be very lucrative and useful.

As someone who has visited this stretch numerous times, I would add another caveat. To get from Michigan Avenue to the museum campus (Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, and Adler Planetarium), the most direct route is to cut southeast from the corner of Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street through Millennium Park and Grant Park and over to Lake Michigan. This route takes advantage of one of Chicago’s great features: its parks along the lake. However, cutting through the park, getting away from the traffic, and enjoying the nature and different energy of the parks means that I miss out on what is going on along Michigan Avenue. If the city wants more people to follow Michigan Avenue south, does this necessarily mean diverting people away from the parks?

Kenya plans new Konza Technology City dubbed “Africa’s Silicon Savannah”

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Kenya is planning an ambitious new city intended to be a technology center:

Located almost 40 miles south-east of the capital Nairobi, Konza Technology City is expected to create more than 20,000 IT jobs by 2015, and around 200,000 jobs by the time it’s completed in 2030.

The 2011-hectare site will have a residential area comprising around 37,000 homes to accommodate 185,000 people…

“It is expected to spur massive trade and investment as well as create thousands of employment opportunities for young Kenyans,” said Kenya’s president Mwai Kibaki at the groundbreaking ceremony.

The project, which is part of the government’s Vision 2030 initiative to improve the Kenya’s infrastructure, is also set to include a university campus, hotels, schools, hospitals and research facilities.

Sounds impressive. See more at the city’s official website which includes this overview of the history of the project:

The idea and interest for an African Silicon Savannah in Kenya was first inspired by trends in Business Processing Outsourcing and Information Technology Enabled Services (BPO/ITES), which showed a global offshore BPO/ITES revenue estimated at US$ 110 billion in 2010 and a projected three fold growth to reach US$ 300 billion by 2015.

Currently there over 2.8 million people employed in this sub-sector world wide, however, statistics show that Africa only attracts about 1 % of the total revenues accruing from this growing industry. Only a few African countries have made effort to develop this industry; South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Ghana and Mauritius have each launched national programs to grow BPO/ITES.

It became clear that Kenya stood a good chance to attract a sizeable chunk of the expected growth in the off shoring BPO/ITES trade revenues if the Government took lead in the development of this industry.

Now we just have to wait a while to see how it all turns out. I’m not saying it will turn out badly but what if it does – who is responsible for the costs and how might this affect the technology sector in Africa?

While the term “Silicon Savannah” sounds catchy, does having such a name help the prospects for the project? I imagine it could appeal to some with the imagery of connecting Silicon Valley and Africa but it also seems derivative and something plenty of other places have tried.

Bill Gates: we can make progress with goals, data, and a feedback loop

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Bill Gates argues in the Wall Street Journal that significant progress can be made around the world if organizations and residents participate in a particular process:

In the past year, I have been struck by how important measurement is to improving the human condition. You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal—in a feedback loop similar to the one Mr. Rosen describes.

This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right. Historically, foreign aid has been measured in terms of the total amount of money invested—and during the Cold War, by whether a country stayed on our side—but not by how well it performed in actually helping people. Closer to home, despite innovation in measuring teacher performance world-wide, more than 90% of educators in the U.S. still get zero feedback on how to improve.

An innovation—whether it’s a new vaccine or an improved seed—can’t have an impact unless it reaches the people who will benefit from it. We need innovations in measurement to find new, effective ways to deliver those tools and services to the clinics, family farms and classrooms that need them.

I’ve found many examples of how measurement is making a difference over the past year—from a school in Colorado to a health post in rural Ethiopia. Our foundation is supporting these efforts. But we and others need to do more. As budgets tighten for governments and foundations world-wide, we all need to take the lesson of the steam engine to heart and adapt it to solving the world’s biggest problems.

Gates doesn’t use this term but this sounds like a practical application of the scientific method. Instead of responding to a social problem by going out and trying to “do something,” the process should be more rigorous, involve setting goals, collecting good data, interpreting the data, and then adjusting the process from the beginning. This is related to other points about this process:

1. It is one thing to be able to collect data (and this is often its own complicated process) but it is another to know what to do with it once you have it. Compared to the past, data is relatively easy to obtain today but using it well is another matter.

2. Another broad issue in this kind of feedback loop is developing the measurements and what counts as “success.” Some of this is fairly easy; when Gates praises the UN Millennium Goals, reducing occurrences of disease or boosting incomes has face validity for getting at what matters. But, measuring teacher’s performances or what makes a quality college are a little trickier to define in the first place. Gates calls this developing goals but this could be a lengthy process in itself.

It is interesting that Gates mentions the need for such loops in colleges so that students “could know where they would get the most for their tuition money.” The Gates Foundation has put money into studying public schools and just a few weeks ago released some of their findings:

After a three-year, $45 million research project, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation believes it has some answers.

The most reliable way to evaluate teachers is to use a three-pronged approach built on student test scores, classroom observations by multiple reviewers and teacher evaluations from students themselves, the foundation found…

The findings released Tuesday involved an analysis of about 3,000 teachers and their students in Charlotte; Dallas; Denver; Memphis; New York; Pittsburgh; and Hillsborough County, Fla., which includes Tampa. Researchers were drawn from the Educational Testing Service and several universities, including Harvard, Stanford and the University of Virginia…

Researchers videotaped 3,000 participating teachers and experts analyzed their classroom performance. They also ranked the teachers using a statistical model known as value-added modeling, which calculates how much an educator has helped students learn based on their academic performance over time. And finally, the researchers surveyed the students, who turned out to be reliable judges of their teacher’s abilities, Kane said.

All this takes quite a few resources and time. For those interested in quick action, this is not the process to follow. Hopefully, however, the resources and time pay off with better solutions.

Daily Herald encourages new planning regarding housing in northwest Chicago suburbs

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Housing is a metropolitan issue that is often addressed community to community, if at all. The Daily Herald highlights recent efforts in the northwest Chicago suburbs:

In an era when housing development has slowed nearly to a halt, it can feel misguided to be talking about what kind of housing to build in a town and where to build it. But “Homes for a Changing Region” merits attention for a couple of reasons.

One, even the gravest cynic expects the economy will one day turn around and people again will be looking for comfortable homes in inviting communities. So, it’s best to begin preparing now for the types of homes they’ll be looking for.

Plus, the report — produced by the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus, Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning and the regional Metropolitan Planning Council, all with the support of the five communities involved — introduces some new concepts that can help towns be smarter in their development. For one, it encourages cooperation among towns whose development futures seem intrinsically linked. For another, it focuses on reality rather than whim — the needs of residents a town is likely to have in the future rather than of residents it has today or even that it might hope to attract. It envisions an environment in which developers respond to the identifiable marketing needs of particular towns, rather than towns responding to the marketing goals of particular developers.

It’s a worthwhile approach, emphasizing data and efficiency. And it’s about to be applied in another collection of local communities — Carpentersville, East Dundee, Elgin and West Dundee. There, as in the Northwest collaborative, people may find the language more cumbersome and less thrilling than, to make a timely comparison, counting off the stats of a superstar quarterback or comparing defenses of teams from distant towns in the NFL. But. the end result can certainly have a more direct and beneficial impact on their quality of life at home.

Housing is a pressing issue in the Chicago region, particularly since affordable housing is lacking in the city of Chicago. Add to that the trend of decades-long job growth in and movement to the suburbs and there is also a lack of affordable housing in many Chicago suburbs, particularly in wealthier communities. While the Illinois legislature tried to address this in the 2000s, not much has changed.

Even with these new planning efforts, it remains to be seen how much this changes local communities. It sounds like there is a certain number of suburbs in one particular area who are interested but they need more support, not just across suburbs and regional groups, but within their own communities as they go forward with new housing plans. What happens if the suburb of Buffalo Grove, village of just over 41,000 and a median household income of over $91,000 and a poverty rate of 2.9%, and this planning group decides a development of affordable housing needs to be located near an upper-end subdivision? I imagine suburbanites would like the idea of developers responding to needs but what happens if these goals don’t line up?

More evidence for Canadian housing bubble?

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I wrote just over a week ago about a possible Canadian housing bubble and here is more evidence: Canadian housing is over-valued.

The distinction between higher prices and bubbly prices isn’t as subjective as it might sound. Like any other financial asset, there should be a fairly steady relationship between the price of housing and the stream of income — rent — it produces. Should be. The chart below, from The Economist, looks at the price-to-rent ratios across different countries, and measures how under-or-overvalued housing is, with negative numbers corresponding to the former and positive ones to the latter.
 HousingPrices.png…
Canada is quietly trying to deflate its bubble without any eye-catching headlines. And that means keeping interest rates low while making mortgages harder to get. Now, raising rates to pop a bubble sounds like the kind of hard-hearted long view central bankers pride themselves on, but it’s more hard-headed. Higher rates don’t just make housing (or any other asset bought with borrowed money) less affordable for new buyers; they make them less affordable for old buyers with adjustable-rate loans too. That sends prices spiraling down and savings racing up, as heavily indebted households, which Canada has no shortage of, try to rebuild their net worths. Higher desired savings outpaces desired investment — in other words, the economy collapses — and subsequently cutting rates, even to zero, won’t do much to reverse this, as houses and businesses are mostly indifferent to lower borrowing costs while they focus on paying down existing debts. It’s what economist Richard Koo calls a “balance sheet recession,” and it’s a good description of how an economy can get stuck in a liquidity trap.
But by keeping rates where they are and slowly tightening mortgage requirements, Canada hopes to engineer a more gradual price decline that won’t set off a vicious circle. In the best case, prices wouldn’t fall, except below the rate of inflation, so that real prices decline without hitting household net worths. This strategy is hardly unique — China has done the same the past few years — but it has the very Canadian name of “macroprudential regulation”.

This is something worth watching. I haven’t seen yet any speculation of how a downturn in the Canadian housing market might affect the United States. I don’t know how much connection there is between the Canadian and American housing markets. The Canadian market is certainly smaller than the US market; there was a big drop in Canadian housing starts from 2008 to 2009, a drop from 211,056 to 149,081, but housing starts in 2012 were back to 2008 levels at 214,827. In contrast, the US had 954,000 private housing starts in December 2012 alone. But, if a housing crash in Canada had a broader impact on the Canadian economy, then it may influence the American economy after all.

Decrease in young people in Illinois; how might suburbs be different with less children?

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The Chicago Tribune leads today with a story of demographic change in Illinois: along with some other states, Illinois has experienced a drop in its young population.

Demographers have long known that the baby boom of the 1950s was giving way to a baby bust nationwide. Now Illinois and the Chicago area are providing a vivid example of the trend: According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, from 2000 to 2010, Illinois had a 6.2 percent drop in children under 10, among the biggest declines in the country.

The impact is being felt in declining school enrollments and refashioned youth programs, officials say. In coming years, it will be felt in a workforce with fewer workers to replace retirees and help replenish pension coffers.

Changes in the youth population are especially pronounced in Chicago, which lost one-fifth of its young residents, particularly along parts of the lakefront, in Hispanic neighborhoods and in places where public housing high-rises once stood. But the trend is also under way in suburbs in Cook and DuPage counties…

Even suburbs such as Naperville and Winnetka — traditionally magnets for families — saw relatively sharp declines in their populations of children.

The impact of this could last for quite a while. I’m most interested in the bits about suburban communities. Since the post-World War II suburban boom, suburbs have been generally regarded as the best setting for children. With more space and good schools, kids could be safe and experience the middle-class life. This image coincided with a baby boom where lots of young families, including those of military veterans who had returned from the war, moved to the suburbs. So how would suburbs be different without as many children?

To start, as the article suggests, this would have a big influence on school districts. Communities that once had to build multiple schools to keep up with new developments might now have to contract schools. What will happen to the old buildings? Might this lead to smaller school district budgets which could then lead to less money from property tax bills going to school districts? I imagine a number of suburban residents would be happy at the thought that schools would cost less. Even as communities like Naperville were expanding, some existing residents were pushing for fewer houses so that their tax bills wouldn’t increase.

Going beyond schools, this could lead to changes for other taxing bodies such as park districts and libraries. But, even more broadly, this could change the character of many suburbs. Without as many children, the main focus of suburbs might change from familialism to something else. One big trend in American life today is the rise of single-person households, which could also become the plurality in the suburbs. There have also been rumblings about older suburbanites whose kids are growing up or have already left the house wanting to move to denser areas. Neighborhoods and communities that once revolved around children and their activities would have to shift their focus elsewhere. Imagine a Chicago suburb that becomes known as a haven for the 50+ crowd. Or a suburb where young professionals have a hopping cultural and entertainment scene.

Average new house size expected to drop to 2,150 square feet by 2015

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A short report on McMansions links to a National Association of Home Builders survey that suggests building professionals believe the square footage of the average new American house will fall by 2015:

Respondents expect the average, new single-family detached home in 2015 to be about 2,152 square feet, 10 percent smaller than the average size of single-family homes started in the first three quarters of 2010. Overall, 63 percent of respondents expect the average size of new homes in 2015 to be somewhere between 2,000 square feet and 2,399 square feet, 22 percent expect it to be between 2,400 square feet and 2,999 square feet, while 13 percent expect it to only be 1,600 square feet to 1,999 square feet (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Average Home Size in 2015

Data from the Census Bureau indicates that the average size of single-family homes completed peaked in 2007, at 2,521 square feet, was virtually unchanged in 2008, and then declined in 2009 to 2,438 square feet. Preliminary data for 2010 shows a further decline, down to 2,377 square feet. Although part of the recent drop in average home size may indeed be temporary due to hard economic times, a number of factors lead building professionals to expect home size declines in the long-run: consumers are focused on lowering the cost of heating and cooling their homes; they no longer have sizeable equity in their current homes to finance a much larger one; diminished expectations for house price appreciation has reduced demand for extra square footage in order to achieve appreciation on a larger base; demographics, 29 percent of the US population will be 55+ in the year 2020, demanding smaller homes; and strict mortgage underwriting for the foreseeable future. Combined, these factors will weigh on the consumer to purchase homes based on need more than want.

My interpretation of this is that a majority of builders think new homes in 2015 will be slightly smaller than new homes of today. Additionally, 23% still believe new homes will be larger than 2,400 square feet. Interestingly, there is not reported evidence of whether building professionals think these smaller new homes of the future will be cheaper.

And here is where square footage will be dropped from these future houses:

To save on square footage, the living room is high on the endangered list – 52 percent of builders expect it to be merged with other spaces in the home by 2015 and 30 percent said it will vanish entirely.

“As an overall share of total floor space, 54 percent of builders said the family room is likely to increase,” said Rose Quint, NAHB’s assistant vice president for survey research. “That makes it the only area of the home likely to get bigger.”

In addition, the relative size of the entry foyer and dining room are likely to be diminished by 2015. However, opinions were fairly evenly divided on the fate of the kitchen, master bedroom and bath and mudroom, she said.

The survey methodology is also worth noting – it was sent to a lot of interested parties but the response rate was under 10%:

NAHB’s The New Home in 2015 survey was sent electronically to 3,019 builders, designers, architects, manufacturers, and marketing specialists. The sample was stratified by region of the country (to be proportional to housing starts in each of the four Census regions) and, among builders, by their number of units started.

A total of 238 responses were received, of which 30 percent came from single-family builders, 19 percent from architects, 26 percent from designers, 7 percent from manufacturers, and 18 percent from “other” building industry professionals.

At first glance, this suggests to me that the findings are quite untrustworthy.

Update on sociology becoming part of the MCAT in January 2015

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ASA’s Footnotes for December 2012 includes an article with more details on sociological material being included on the MCAT in upcoming years:

An important change in the MCAT® (the Medical College Admission Test) has the potential to have a significant impact on sociology departments across the country. In February 2012, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) “approved changes… that will require aspiring doctors to have an understanding of the social and behavioral sciences.” (Mann, 2012). The new version of the test, which will be in place by January of 2015, includes an entire section on the social and behavioral sciences. One implication of this change is that pre-medical curricula across the country may start requiring that students take an introductory sociology course (as well as an introductory course in psychology) in preparation for taking the MCAT (see, for example, Brenner and Ringe 2012)…

The exact content of sociology and psychology test questions is not yet finalized. Starting in January 2014 the new social science section of the MCAT will be included as an “optional” section. The cohort of students who take that first updated version of the MCAT are already enrolled in college. Students who choose to complete it will be compensated in some way. These trial runs will be used to modify the section before it “counts” as part of the MCAT score. Starting in January 2015 the test will include the required section on social and behavioral sciences.

The new section of the MCAT that tests sociology and psychology is described in a Preview Guide to the MCAT2015 Exam. The descriptions contained in that guide detail specific content areas within sociology (including “understanding social structure,” “demographic characteristics and processes,” “social stratification,” and “social inequality”) that will be covered on the test (AAMC 2012:12).

Two quick thoughts:

1. I’ve mentioned this change in my Intro classes a few times and I think some pre-med students were aware of what was happening. I can’t say for sure that I’ve had an uptick in students interested in medical fields but this article suggests this could happen in coming years.

2. While I think this makes a lot of sense for medical practitioners to have some knowledge of society and social life, I am amazed at times that more fields don’t explicitly train their students or ask them to take classes in social life. For example, isn’t business often about interacting with people as well as managing employees? Wouldn’t sociology provide insights into this?