Category Archives: Sociology

Small home – 89 square feet

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I’ve seen this guy, Jay Shafer, in the news before with his 89-square foot home. Here is a video of his small space from Yahoo.

I have always liked small spaces like this, particularly for their coziness. Every time I go to Ikea, I’m attracted to the 280-square foot home they usually have set up.

Stories like these occasionally pop up, often with some sermonizing regarding American consumption. With the average American home around 2,400 square feet, very small houses are rare. Smaller spaces may be common in places like Manhattan (where we occasionally hear about studio apartments created out of closets) but probably don’t appeal to many.

Generation Y not saving for retirement

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Businessweek writes about efforts to get employees of Generation Y to contribute to 401(k) and other retirement programs. Apparently, this is difficult as student loans average around $20,000 and average salaries for this age group have dropped 19 percent over the last three decades after adjusting for inflation.

If you are in Generation Y, be prepared to see more efforts (through social media, for example) to get you to contribute to retirement savings.

h/t Instapundit

Quick Review: The Matthew Effect

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Sociologist Daniel Rigney tackles the “Matthew Effect” in a book published earlier in 2010. The “Matthew effect” refers to a situation where those with more get even more and those with less continue to get less so that there is a growing gap. The effect is captured in the phrase “the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.”

The “Matthew effect” was coined by famous sociologist Robert Merton and refers to a Biblical saying of Jesus (Matthew 13:12): “Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.”

My quick thoughts:

1. The book is a quick overview of the “Matthew effect” within different fields like science, technology, and politics. The book is not very deep and the examples are not fully explored. The primary goal seems to be to argue that Matthew effects are found throughout human activity.

2. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell tackles the same subject. Gladwell’s book is mentioned by Rigney and I wish Rigney added more sociological insights as Gladwell already provided a good overview.

3. The implications section (Chapter 6) raises some interesting questions but does not provide a sufficient discussion. An intriguing question: is the Matthew effect a law or a social construction?

4. Overall: I found some good examples of how social inequality develops to use with future classes. Beyond that, the book is simplistic and would benefit from deeper discussions regarding specific Matthew effects and their implications.

Unemployment and the millennials

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The New York Times reprints some unemployment figures:

For young adults, the prospects in the workplace, even for the college-educated, have rarely been so bleak. Apart from the 14 percent who are unemployed and seeking work…23 percent are not even seeking a job, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The total, 37 percent, is the highest in more than three decades and a rate reminiscent of the 1930s.

…and fleshes out those figures with the anecdote of Scott Nicholson, a 2008 college graduate who is still looking for work:

The daily routine seldom varied. Mr. Nicholson, 24, a graduate of Colgate University, winner of a dean’s award for academic excellence, spent his mornings searching corporate Web sites for suitable job openings. When he found one, he mailed off a résumé and cover letter — four or five a week, week after week.

I think what makes this story so interesting is its intergenerational comparison of Scott, his father, and his grandfather and the opportunities available to each.  Louis Uchitelle makes a strong case that fundamental opportunities have shifted, that the millennials’ equivalent of “go West, young man” means leaving the U.S.–and its moribund economy–entirely.

The high costs of living in suburbia

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Via Yahoo! Finance, the New York Times looks at the costs of living in the suburbs vs. living in the city. The verdict: unless a family is sending kids to private school (particularly at middle-school age and above), the suburban life costs about 18% more.

The basis for the analysis – and Manhattan is not part of the figures:

While our analysis was by no means scientific, our goal was to recreate the type of decision a hypothetical family of four earning $175,000 a year might encounter. We chose an upper-middle-class income because that’s generally what our family needs to earn, conservatively, to afford a median-price home in Park Slope, a section of Brooklyn that is family-friendly, has good schools and is generally more affordable than Manhattan.

The two-bedroom, one-bathroom co-operative apartment that we’re using as a model in Park Slope is listed at $675,000, close to the median price for the neighborhood, as calculated by Zillow.com.

We stacked that against a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom home in South Orange, N.J., just a 30-minute train ride from Manhattan, where the two parents work. The house is selling for $595,000.

Some experts have been talking a long time about the hidden costs of suburbia due to more driving and sprawl. Homes may be cheaper (and bigger) but there are added costs from lower density living.

If homeowners were presented with this sort of evidence (assuming it would hold up across cities), would they chose the suburbs in lesser numbers? Or would people still be willing to pay a premium for the amenities that suburbia can offer?

Morning people viewed more positively

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According to biology professor Christoph Randler, morning people are viewed more positively. Through surveying 367 college students, Randler found that “The problem is that those with the genetic gift of “morning-ness” tend to be more highly rewarded. Morning-ness is perceived as a sign of activity and zest, whereas evening-ness implies laziness and loafing.”

As the story discusses briefly, this seems to be a cultural issue. In certain arenas, traits associated with being “up and ready” in the morning are prized. Being peppy and ready to go in the morning can indicate a person is efficient and in control.

How about a study that examines perceptions of people who accomplish roughly the same amount of work but who are opposites in terms of being morning or evening people. Do people and/or institutions place a higher value on being ready to go in the morning even if the work gets done by the end of the day?

Spies in suburbia: not unusual

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The Russian spy ring recently caught in America was primarily based in suburbia. One New York Times writer argues that this is not that unusual:

We’ve seen this movie before, a variation on “Fun With Dick and Jane” or “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” among others.

It’s fun, but as sociology, the story line set against the presumed seamless banality of suburban life gets ever flimsier. We seem to have had a computer chip implanted in our brain about the time of “Little Boxes,” the dopey and incredibly sanctimonious 1962 song about suburban conformity (“Little boxes made of ticky tacky … Little boxes all the same”) that helped define the suburbs. And it seems to persist even as its descriptive value trends toward zero. So at a time when more than half of Americans live in suburbs, what exactly does the suburban part of this tale tell us? Alas, not much.

The article contains more information about the growing diversity in suburbia including a smaller number of families living the “Ozzie and Harriet sort of life.” (Perhaps this phrase needs to be updated for the 21st century since “Ozzie and Harriet” is a little dated. How about the “Homer and Marge Simpson suburban life”?) If a majority of Americans live in suburbia, it is not unusual that a number of nefarious characters come out of suburbia.

What is not addressed in this article is a stereotype that suburbia leads people to such things as spying, violence, and breaking up their families to escape the dull and empty suburban lifestyle. In this case, the Russians came to suburbia to blend in and live a normal life.

More evidence: start school day later for teens

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It seems like I have been reading for years about studies that say that teenagers perform much better in school when the starting time is pushed back. Here is another study that suggests starting the day 30 minutes later leads to “stunning” results.

It raises a question: why don’t more schools respond by changing their starting times? I’ve heard arguments about this interfering with after-school activities, particularly sports. It may conflict with schedules for siblings in schools with different starting times or may lead to a shortage of buses since early high school times mean the buses can be used again for elementary students. And there are more reasons that get thrown around, many probably legitimate.

But: if the real goal of educators (and the supporting parents) is to help students succeed in school (specifically: boost learning), isn’t this something that needs to change?

Not simply deriding suburban life

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An AP story discusses a supposed movement to take the suburbs more seriously and move beyond common negative stereotypes. One scholar accurately notes:

“Change your mind about what the suburbs are,” said Robert Puentes, a suburban scholar at the Brookings Institution. “They’re not just bedroom communities for center-city workers. They’re not just rich enclaves. They’re not all economically stable. They’re not all exclusively white.”

“These are not your father’s suburbs of the 1950s and 1960s.”

Efforts toward this end include a new museum in Johnson County, Kansas and several academic centers.

These stereotypes will take time to overcome. Common stereotypes, dating back to at least the 1950s, include: bland homes and people, desperate housewives, whites only, lifestyles centered all around children, wealthy people only, conservative, low-brow, garish (from strip malls to shopping malls to McMansions).

The story cites two academic centers for suburban studies. For much of the last 100 years, academics have often led the way in deriding suburbia. To fight some of these stereotypes, more academics would need to be able to move beyond knee-jerk reactions and acknowledge suburbia’s complexities.