Category Archives: Sociology

If you want peace, you should head to Maine

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The Institute for Economics and Peace has released its rankings of the most peaceful states in the United States and Maine tops the list. Here is some more information on this ranking:

The index, which defines peace as “the absence of violence,” looks at a set of five indicators, including homicide rates, violent crimes, percentage of the population in jail, number of police officers and availability of small arms (per 100,000 people) to rank the states. The data are drawn from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, FBI and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On that basis, the institute finds that peace in the USA improved by 8% from 1995 to 2009.

It notes a significant correlation between a state’s level of peace and its economic opportunity, education and health but finds peacefulness is politically neutral — neither Republican nor Democratic states have an advantage.

Maine was ranked first overall because it topped the list of states on three of the five USPI indicators: number of violent crimes, number of police officers and incarceration rate.

There is some interesting regional variation with the northeast generally being more peaceful and the south being less peaceful. I’m sure there are a number of commentators and sociologists who could comment on the these findings about the South.

But, like many such rankings (see a recent example here), I’m sure people would ask whether these measures actually get at the presence or absence of violence. The percentage of the population in jail could be related to violence but there are plenty of other ways to end up in jail. The number of police officers could be related to violence but it could also be linked to funding and perceptions about crime. In terms of the availability of small arms, does this necessarily lead to violence?

Using these measures seems linked to how this organization views peace. According to the full report (page 8 of the PDF), “The methodological framework was based on envisaging a society that is perfectly at peace; a society where there is no violence, no police and no one in jail.” Here is the explanation about using the measure of small arms (page 8 of the PDF): “Additionally, this logic also applies to small arms: “the USPI does not make judgments about appropriate levels of small arms in society but rather considers their prevalence a reflection of the need for self-defense and a potential to generate violence.”

I don’t study in this area so it is interesting to read about how some of these things can ever be measured. Regarding getting a measure of small arms availability (page 10 of the PDF):

Although the U.S. has excellent data for many statistics, there is no reliable data on small arms availability, small arms ownership, or small arms sales within the U.S. or within the states of the U.S. An accurate measure of gun prevalence cannot be calculated from administrative records alone. For this reason many studies on gun prevalence use a quantitative proxy. The proxy used in the USPI is: fi rearm suicides as a percentage of total suicides (FS/S). As this indicator varied significantly from year to year for some states, a five year moving average was used in order to smooth out the variance. For example, the fi gure used for Alabama for 2008 was an average of FS/S for 2003-2007. More detail on why this proxy was chosen is supplied in Appendix B to this report.

The availability of small arms also had the lowest weighting in the rankings.

High vacancy rates at strip malls and shopping centers

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More sour news regarding the economy, this time regarding retail space in strip malls and shopping malls:

Mall vacancies hit their highest level in at least 11 years in the first quarter, new figures from real-estate research company Reis Inc. showed. In the top 80 U.S. markets, the average vacancy rate was 9.1%, up from 8.7%.

The outlook is especially bad for strip malls and other neighborhood shopping centers. Their vacancy rate is expected to top 11.1% later this year, up from 10.9%, Reis predicts. That would be the highest level since 1990.

In 2005, the mall-vacancy rate hit a low of 5.1%. For strip centers the boom-time low vacancy rate was 6.7% that same year.

The article goes on to mention how this problem is particularly acute on the suburban fringe where development was taking place or was predicted to take place.

While strip malls take a beating from those opposed to sprawl and suburban garishness (think James Howard Kunstler – see his TED speech on the topic here), they can be quite important to local economies. From where I live in the suburbs (roughly 25-30 miles west of Chicago), there are numerous strip malls, including a number that I can walk to within fifteen minutes. While most of these businesses are not flashy, they encompass certain consumer needs from car care places to drug stores to restaurants to hardware stores. I have always wondered how businesses thrive in these settings: there is so much competition (why can’t the customer just go to the competition in the strip mall down the street?) and many decry the strip mall (though it would be an interesting debate to see whether people think they are worse than big box stores).

Using Groupon to sell real estate

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With the real estate market in the doldrums (and no end in sight), there are reports about a new strategy that would leverage the popular site Groupon:

In the Dream Town deal, the brokerage will pay out $1,000 in cash at closing to home buyers or sellers that spend $25 for the Groupon. The voucher is good for one year from the date of purchase. The offer launches on Friday and will run for a week. On Monday, it will be the featured deal for Chicago subscribers.

The Dream Town deal tips with 50 vouchers purchased, said co-founder and president Yuval Degani. The coupons apply to both traditional and distressed properties, and buyers can be owner-occupiers or investors. The transaction must be at least $150,000 to qualify for the deal, and there is a limit of one Groupon per customer. There is no cap on the total number of Groupons that can be sold.

“Our big picture is we’re really an emerging company,” Degani said, noting that Dream Town has focused on its Web presence and search engine optimization, which helps its site appear higher on search results. “What we’re trying to do is acquire new customers. We’re not really looking at (the Groupon deal) as a reduced commission. We’re looking at it as getting customers for life.”

Degani said Dream Town has four locations and 165 agents in the area.

I wonder how many people will take this offer and then use it within a year. Typical Groupon deals are for smaller or more immediate purchases while this asks buyers to consider a bigger and more important purchase. But if you are already looking to buy (though there are a limited number of these people), $1,000 in cash could sound pretty good.

The article also mentions some other innovative offers that have recently popped up on Groupon. Seeing this story reminds me that the outgoing Mayor Daley spoke at length in a speech on campus (here, here, and here) about the success story of Groupon. But a city like Chicago will need a number of companies like Groupon to develop and thrive in order to gain population.

Harvard Crimson makes a case for sociology

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In an editorial about hiring more sociology faculty, the Harvard Crimson discusses the interest in and usefulness of sociology:

[T]his seems to indicate that the increase in sociology concentrators is based on actual interest in the subject matter rather than the perceived ease of the concentration or “herd” mentality—as seems to be the case with economics, in which the increase in concentrators has not corresponded with an increase in tutorial applicants.

Additionally, students across the college are increasingly interested in pre-professional studies—witness the popularity of the global health and health policy secondary and the new interest in a social innovation secondary. Although The Crimson Staff believes that the intent of the College experience is to provide a liberal arts education, sociology is nevertheless the best way to explore pre-professional interests within that framework. In the concentration, one can focus on topics such as “work, organizations, and management” or “health, medicine, and society,” which are good fits for students with a definite career interest in business or healthcare.

Is this increased interest in sociology among Harvard students mirrored elsewhere?

I also agree with this idea that sociology is a great preparation for “pre-professional interests,” particularly when students know they are going on for advanced degrees.

Sounds like a decent pitch to me – and it even has a dig about economics…

The benefits of Best Buy’s flex schedules for employees

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Two sociologists have published a study in the American Sociological Review that shows that employees at Best Buy’s headquarters benefit from flex schedules:

Sociology professors Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen said a flexible work schedule that focuses on results and not just activity cut turnover at Best Buy’s Richfield headquarters by 45 percent while improving productivity.

The flex schedules, they said, cut down on stress and work interruptions due to personal issues because employees were able to find a better balance between their work and home lives…

The U of M study followed 600 workers for eight months after the start of the program, 300 who worked under the flex plan and 300 who continued working the traditional 9-5 day…

The study showed that 6 percent of the employees working under the flex plan left Best Buy during the study period, while 11 percent of the control group left during that time. Also, the results were about the same regardless of gender, age, tenure, job satisfaction, and stage of life.

Turnover can be a problem for companies who then have to hire new employees and train them so cutting turnover even five percent is no small matter.

Based on the success of the program, Best Buy has changed some of their practices:

The research showed that the flex program led to Best Buy getting rid of “low-value work,” such as unnecessary meetings. The researchers said staff and supervisors started re-considering their work patterns, figuring out what activities were the most productive.

It would be interesting to see exactly how the employees in the flex program talk about these changes. And I would be interested in hearing more about this trade-off in a company stressing results rather than activity – are there downsides to this?

Possible Fermilab “breakthough” illustrates statistical significance

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Scientists at Fermilab may be on the verge of a scientific breakthrough regarding “a new elementary particle or a new fundamental force of nature.” There is just one problem:

But scientists on the Fermilab team say there is about a 1 in 1,000 chance that the results are a statistical fluke — odds far too high for them to claim a discovery.

“That’s no more than what physicists tend to call an ‘observation’ or an ‘indication,’ ” said Caltech physicist Harvey Newman.

For the finding to be considered real, researchers have to reduce the chances of a statistical fluke to about 1 in a million.

One of the key concepts in a statistics or social research course is statistical significance, where researchers say that they are 95% certain (or more) that their result is not just the result due to their sample or chance but that it actually reflects the population or reality. These scientists at Fermilab then want to be really sure that the results reflect reality as they want to reduce their possible error to 1 in a million.

Beyond working with the calculations, the scientists are also hoping to replicate their findings and rule out other explanations for what they are seeing:

Researchers hope that more data compiled at Fermilab will shed light on the matter, or that the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva will be able to replicate the findings. “We will know this summer when we double the data sets and see if it is still there,” said physicist Rob Roser of Fermilab, who is a spokesman for the project…

What the team must to do now, Roser said, is “eliminate all the mundane explanations.” They have been working on that, he said, and decided it was time to go public and let others know what they had found so far.

And science rolls on.

A rise in the number of “domino dads”

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A new study suggests there is a rise in the number of fathers who have children with multiple mothers:

More than a quarter of all U.S. mothers with more than one child had some of those kids with different men, according to a new study.

Among African-American women with several children, that figure rises to more than half; among Hispanics, it’s more than a third, and among whites it’s 22%.

Multiple partner fertility, as the phenomenon is called in academic circles, is a cause of concern among many sociologists, since studies have shown that growing up in a home in which different men cycle in and out is not good for a child’s health or well being. Think of these families as having domino dads, with each one’s departure putting pressure on the next.

The articles goes on to discuss some of the negative impact this might have on children. But more broadly, this hints at a way of life for many that is quite different from the image of the nuclear family or even single-parenthood: families where multiple fathers are in and out of the picture.

Debating the decline of religion in America

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For several decades now, sociologists have upheld the idea that when compared to other industrialized nations, the United States is uniquely religious. An argument for secularization which gained prominence in the 1960s was eventually refuted as Americans showed a remarkable religious vitality.

But some argue that new data about religion in America suggests that religion may indeed may on the decline. In a new book titled The Decline of American Religion, sociologist Mark Chaves looks at some of the evidence:

His conclusion: “The burden of proof has shifted to those who want to claim that American religiosity is not declining.”…

“…[E]very indicator of traditional religiosity is either stable or declining. This is why I think it is reasonable to conclude that American religion has in fact declined in recent decades — slowly, but unmistakably,” Chaves said.

Those indicators of decline, taken from General Social Survey data, include:

  • From 1990 to 2008, the percent of people who never attend religious services rose from 13 percent to 22 percent.
  • Just 45 percent of adult respondents born after 1970 reported growing up with religiously active fathers.
  • In the 1960s, about 1 percent of college freshmen expected to become clergy. Now, about three-tenths of a percent have the same expectation.
  • The percentage of people saying they have a great deal of confidence in leaders of religious institutions has declined from about 35 percent in the 1970s to about 25 percent today.

This particular data would seem to suggest a very slow decline – though Chaves himself seems careful to say that the data could also be interpreted to say that there is stability.

Sociologist Bradley Wright looks at some similar data in his book Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites (read a description of the argument here) and comes to a slightly different conclusion. Wright suggests some of the people who now identify as non-religious simply don’t like to identify with organized religion and that many of them still say they have religious beliefs and practices. Wright also briefly argues that the number of committed religious people may not have changed; rather, “cultural” Christians may be those who are now identifying as non-religious.

Time will help settle this debate: in the United States, will religion continue to decline in future years and exactly what shape will this decline take? In the meantime, we will have to see how Chaves’ claim that the burden of proof is now on those who show there is not a decline plays out.

Discussing myths regarding the most segregated American cities

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As a follow-up to a recent piece looking at the top 10 segregated cities in the United States (see my discussion here), a Salon writer discusses five myths people have regarding this data.

An interesting read and several sociologists contribute to the myth-busting.

Statistic: “More Than 1,000 Mexicans Leave Catholic Church Daily”

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Statistics are often put into terms that the average citizen might understand. Or, more cynically, into terms that grabs attention. Here is an example from a sociologist/historian looking at data about Catholicism in Mexico:

More than 1,000 Mexicans left the Catholic Church every day over the last decade, adding up to some 4 million fallen-away Catholics between 2000 and 2010, sociologist and historian Roberto Blancarte told Efe.

Put this way (and a headline built around this daily figure), this statistic seems noteworthy as it looks like a lot of people are making this decision every day. But later in the article, we get a broader perspective:

In 1950, 98.21 percent of Mexicans said they were Catholic, in 1960 the percentage dropped to 96.47 percent, in 1970 to 96.17 percent, in 1980 to 92.62 percent, in 1990 the percentage dropped to 89.69 percent, in 2000 the country was only 88 percent Catholic, and now that percentage is lower still at 83.9 percent.

This signifies that the last decade has seen a drop of more than 4 percentage points, equivalent to almost 4 million people or an average of 1,300 people a day leaving the Catholic Church.

From this decade-by-decade perspective, there is a clear decline from 98.21 percent to 83.9 percent in 2010, a drop of just over 14 percent over 60 years. But this longer-term perspective also helps show that the daily average isn’t really that helpful: are there really 1,300 people each day that make a conscious decision to leave the church? Is this how it works among individual citizens? In this case, it might be better to look at the percentage change each decade and see that the 4.1 percent drop in the 2000s is the largest since 1950.

Additionally, can the average person easily envision what exactly 1,300 people means? This is a large room of people, bigger than even a decent size college classroom but not quite enough to fill a decent sized theater. The Metro in Chicago holds about 1,150 so this is a close approximation.

At least we didn’t get down to another type of common statistic: this data from Mexico breaks down to about 1 Catholic leaving the church every 1.11 minutes.