Tag Archives: inequality

Sociologists argue it is difficult to find causal data for how inequality leads to different outcomes

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Two sociologists tackle the question of how exactly inequality is related to a variety of social outcomes and argue it is difficult to find causal, and not correlative, data:

For all the brain power thrown at the problem since then, however, specific evidence about inequality’s effects has been hard to find. Mr. Jencks said he could already picture the book’s reviews, “Professor Doesn’t Know What He Is Talking About.”…

One problem with these analyses is that they are based on correlations between levels of inequality and variables like life expectancy or the odds of poor children climbing the income ladder. But such correlations can’t prove inequality causes other social ills. They can’t disentangle inequality from the myriad things pushing American society this way and that.

Life expectancy in the United States might lag that of other countries because the United States still does not have universal health care. Scandinavia may enjoy higher upward mobility than the United States because governments in Sweden, Denmark and other Scandinavian countries invest a lot in early childhood education and the United States does not.

Lane Kenworthy, a sociologist at the University of Arizona, is all too aware of these limitations. He was to be Mr. Jencks’s co-author on the book about inequality’s consequences. Now he is going it alone, hoping to publish “Should We Worry About Inequality?” next year.

“People that worry about inequality for normative reasons have been very quick to jump on plausible hypothesis and a little bit of evidence to make sweeping conclusions about its consequences,” Professor Kenworthy told me.

It sounds like these sociologists are asking for some more methodological rigor in studying how inequality affects social life. Finding direct relationships between social forces and outcomes can be difficult but I look forward to seeing more work on the subject.

Read more in this follow-up interview with Lane Kenworthy.

Big differences in life expectancy across American counties due to income differences

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Here is an update on the “longevity gap,” the differences in life expectancy, by county in the United States:

Fairfax County, Va., and McDowell County, W.Va., are separated by 350 miles, about a half-day’s drive. Traveling west from Fairfax County, the gated communities and bland architecture of military contractors give way to exurbs, then to farmland and eventually to McDowell’s coal mines and the forested slopes of the Appalachians. Perhaps the greatest distance between the two counties is this: Fairfax is a place of the haves, and McDowell of the have-nots. Just outside of Washington, fat government contracts and a growing technology sector buoy the median household income in Fairfax County up to $107,000, one of the highest in the nation. McDowell, with the decline of coal, has little in the way of industry. Unemployment is high. Drug abuse is rampant. Median household income is about one-fifth that of Fairfax.

One of the starkest consequences of that divide is seen in the life expectancies of the people there. Residents of Fairfax County are among the longest-lived in the country: Men have an average life expectancy of 82 years and women, 85, about the same as in Sweden. In McDowell, the averages are 64 and 73, about the same as in Iraq…

Since the 1980s, “socioeconomic status has become an even more important indicator of life expectancy.” That was the finding of a 2008 report by the Congressional Budget Office. But dollars in a bank account have never added a day to anyone’s life, researchers stress. Instead, those dollars are at work in a thousand daily-life decisions — about jobs, medical care, housing, food and exercise — with a cumulative effect on longevity.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/03/15/business/higher-income-longer-lives.html

This is part of a growing body of research that links demographics and social forces, including social spaces, to different health outcomes. Wealthier counties can offer a wide range of health and social services as well as have more higher class residents while poorer counties have different social structures.

While the county level data is interesting, I would assume there would also be some wide differences in life expectancy within counties. Fairfax County, Virginia is one of the wealthiest U.S. counties but income levels there are not uniform. Cook County, Illinois could include some of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago as well as Kenilworth, Illinois, one of the wealthiest suburbs with a median household income of over $247,000. Check out these maps from VCU’s Center on Society and Health on life expectancy in metro areas. Here is what they found in Chicago:

So the contrast between a county in Virginia versus one in West Virginia might be notable but one doesn’t have to travel that far to find big differences in life expectancy.

Sprawling American cities have less inequality

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A new report from the Brookings Institution suggests sprawling American cities have less inequality:

In a new report, All Cities Are Not Created Unequal, Berube compared levels of inequality in fifty large American cities. He found the gap between rich and poor is rising in large cities on the East and West Coasts, while cities in the South and West like Las Vegas, Mesa, and Fort Worth, are more equal, and retain more of what the middle class needs…

“They built a lot more housing over time that has managed to maintain a middle class, and they don’t have sectors of the economy, like finance and technology, that tend to be driving incomes at the upper end of the distribution,” Berube said. “They’ve got sectors like transportation, warehousing, and retail.”

Those are industries, Berube says, where you’re unlikely to strike it very rich, but where a middle-class income is still within reach.

This sounds very much like David Rusk’s argument in Cities Without Suburbs. He suggests what differentiates cities is their elasticity, a measure of how much land they have annexed during their history. Newer cities, particularly in the South and West, have been able to annex more land. This then gives them more residents who might otherwise move to the suburbs, boosting the city’s tax base and mix of residents.

Read the full Brookings report here.

Harvard historian addresses McMansions and inequality

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A historian in Harvard’s Business School discusses McMansions and its connections to inequality in an extended conversation here. Some good stuff in this conversation including how top-end consumers are driving the recent comeback of McMansions, a shout-out to sociologist Thorstein Veblen and his idea of “conspicuous consumption,” the idea of a national consumption tax, and how capitalism finds a way to move forward, including creating some inequality.

This is a reminder of the kind of smart and lively conversation that is possible on public radio…

Looking at concentrated income in the United States by county

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Looking at median household income by county shows some interesting regional patterns in the United States:

There are more than 3,000 counties in the U.S. Of the 75 with the highest incomes, 44 are located in the Northeast, including Maryland and Virginia. The corridor of metropolitan statistical areas that runs from Washington, D.C., through Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston includes 37 of these top-earning counties (where the median family takes home at least $75,000 a year). Zoom in to the region, and it shows a kind of wealth belt unmatched even on the West Coast.

Poverty is similarly concentrated in the American South. Seventy-nine percent of the poorest counties in the country (where the median family makes less than $35,437) are located in the South..

Relative to 2007, 33 percent of all U.S. counties saw statistically significant increases in poverty by 2012 (across all age groups), deepening the challenges in places that had been struggling even before the recession. Over this same time period, however, one part of the country in particular saw an actual increase in median incomes, and it wasn’t the traditionally wealthy Northeast corridor.

It was the Upper Great Plains. Statistically significant increases in median income, from 2007-2012, are shown in green.

The maps help make these regional patterns clear. But, I wonder how much looking at patterns obscures some important information:

1. Counties are relatively big pieces of land. While income by county tells us something, it also covers up important variation within counties. Take a wealthy county: it doesn’t mean everyone is doing so but just that the median is higher than other places. Think of Manhattan where there are plenty of wealthy people but not everyone there is working on Wall Street or buying luxury condos in new buildings. It would be a lot harder to show on a single map but having 25th and 75th percentile information for each county would help show the relative distributions.

2. These figures aren’t weighted by population. A number of those wealthy Northeast counties have lots of plenty. In fact, perhaps the headline is understated when the population is accounted for. In contrast, the end of the article looks at a few counties where median incomes actually increases – the Great Plains with their new found gas wealth – but there aren’t many people there.

3. It is misleading to have a headline about wealth and talk about wealth in the article when the actual measure being used is median income or poverty levels based on income. Actually, looking at wealth and people’s full assets would likely show even wider gaps between counties.

To reiterate: county-level data can gives us a sense of broad patterns or clusters but may not be the best way to think about income changes in the United States.

Infographic: “Gender Inequality in [Hollywood] Film”

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Check out this infographic from the New York Film Academy on gender inequality in American films. A few of the facts involved:

-“Women purchase half of the movie tickets sold in the U.S.” but “28.8% of women wore sexually revealing clothes as opposed to 7.0% of men” in the top 500 films from 2007 to 20012 and the “average ratio of male actors to females is 2.25:1” in these same films.

-The number of men and women working behind the scene in major roles of the top 250 films of 2012 is pretty unequal: women are 9% of directors, 15% of writers, 17% of executive producers, 25% of producers, 20% of editors, and 2% of cinematographers.

-“Forbes 2013 list of the top ten highest paid actresses made a collective $181 million versus $465 million made by the top ten male actors” and “In 2013 the highest paid female actor, Angelina Jolie, made $33 million, roughly the same amount as the two lowest-ranked men. Furthermore, age appears to be a dominant factor in an actress’s monetary success compared to men.”

So much for progressive Hollywood? The infographic also suggests the depth of the inequality goes beyond just star actors and actresses; it applies to numerous important roles and how characters are regularly portrayed.

Another aspect of this is to think about using infographics for social activism. In one big graphic, this group has presented a lot of data regarding gender in American films. Is it more effective to present the data in (1) a splashy way – infographics are hot these days and (2) to overwhelm people with data?

Describing the 20% of temporary rich (“mass affluent”) Americans

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New survey data looks at new rich Americans who draw a lot of attention from companies and who might have outsized political influence:

Fully 20 percent of U.S. adults become rich for parts of their lives, wielding outsize influence on America’s economy and politics. This little-known group may pose the biggest barrier to reducing the nation’s income inequality…

Made up largely of older professionals, working married couples and more educated singles, the new rich are those with household income of $250,000 or more at some point during their working lives. That puts them, if sometimes temporarily, in the top 2 percent of earners…

Companies increasingly are marketing to this rising demographic, fueling a surge of “mass luxury” products and services from premium Starbucks coffee and organic groceries to concierge medicine and VIP lanes at airports. Political parties are taking a renewed look at the up-for-grabs group, once solidly Republican…

In a country where poverty is at a record high, today’s new rich are notable for their sense of economic fragility. They’ve reached the top 2 percent, only to fall below it, in many cases. That makes them much more fiscally conservative than other Americans, polling suggests, and less likely to support public programs, such as food stamps or early public education, to help the disadvantaged…

As the fastest-growing group based on take-home pay, the new rich tend to enjoy better schools, employment and gated communities, making it easier to pass on their privilege to their children…

Sometimes referred to by marketers as the “mass affluent,” the new rich make up roughly 25 million U.S. households and account for nearly 40 percent of total U.S. consumer spending.

This sounds like a group that would call themselves upper middle-class: wealthy enough to enjoy some luxuries and good things for their kids but not wealthy enough to truly compete with the millionaires and CEOs. They resent the idea that they are rich as they think middle-class values, such as hard work and providing for their kids, helped them arrive at their current position.

Yet, when the median household income in the United States is around $50,000 it is hard not see this group as wealthy. To some degree, it is all relative: the mass affluent might not be able to consistently live the high life in Manhattan or San Francisco but they could do really well in cheaper places like the Midwest or Atlanta or Dallas. Perhaps it is the perceived fragility that matters most: losing their job might be enough to move them down back near the median income, though unemployment rates are much lower for the educated and well-trained.

A few questions after reading this article:

1. How big should this group be in the United States?

2. Long-term, which party will capture these voters?

3. Will this group get a lot of negative attention as they are more accessible than the ultra-wealthy who can live more cloistered lives?

“Gated communities for the rich and poor”

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A sociologist who has studied gated communities in Puerto Rico discusses gated communities across the socioeconomic spectrum:

The concentration of class and racial privilege in suburbs, fortressed enclaves, securitized buildings, and private islands takes place alongside the spatial concentration of poverty in ghettos, favelas, and barrios. Residential gates for the rich have also led to the rise of gates for the poor—in favelas in Brazil, South African townships, peripheral urban migrant settlements in China, and even in some public housing developments in the United States. The built environment sorts and segregates people, physically and symbolically distinguishing communities from one another. Whether one is locked inside or kept outside is determined by one’s race, class, and gender. In both kinds of gated communities, controlled access points restrict movement in and out. However, living in gated communities of the rich and poor are vastly different experiences.

The privileged gates of Extensión Alhambra offer a retreat into a secure, idyllic community; newly privatized street and sidewalks are restricted to sanctioned, paying community members, who can decide who is allowed inside. In the impoverished community of Dr. Pila, in contrast, government and private overseers control the movement of residents. So while the gates of Extensión Alhambra permit their affluent residents to exert greater political and social influence over their home turf, in Dr. Pila they have the opposite effect, diminishing residents’ power. In privileged communities, gates lock undesirables out; in poor communities, they lock them in. In both cases, gates are erected to serve the interest of the upper classes, who are primarily white. In other words, gates reproduce inequality, and cement or—to use Michel DeCerteau’s term—“politically freeze” social distinctions of race and class.

The same types of structures, different purposes and consequences. This reminds me of the debate regarding the design of public housing projects in the United States: if high-rises hadn’t been the primary choice and public housing agencies instead went with low-rise buildings or New Urbanist type structures, perhaps major problem would not have developed. But, in the case of public housing and gated communities, they can exacerbate existing issues but it is more difficult to claim they cause the issues in the first place.

Changing the official poverty measure leads to 49.7 million Americans in poverty

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If recommendations from social scientists are followed, the official US government measure of poverty will change and nearly 50 million Americans will be categorized as in poverty:

The number of poor people in America is 3 million higher than the official count, encompassing 1 in 6 residents due to out-of-pocket medical costs and work-related expenses, according to a revised census measure released Wednesday.

The new measure is aimed at providing a fuller picture of poverty, but does not replace the official government numbers. Put in place two years ago by the Obama administration, it generally is considered more reliable by social scientists because it factors in living expenses as well as the effects of government aid, such as food stamps and tax credits.

Administration officials have declined to say whether the new measure eventually could replace the official poverty formula, which is used to allocate federal dollars to states and localities and to determine eligibility for safety-net programs such as Medicaid.

Congress would have to agree to adopt the new measure, which generally would result in a higher poverty rate from year to year and thus higher government payouts for aid programs.

Some other interesting data in the story as well: Social Security reduces poverty for those over 65 years old quite a bit and food stamps reduce the number of Americans in poverty by over 5 million.

On one hand, it is hard to argue with calls for a more accurate measure of poverty. This would better reflect actual living situations and give the government a better tool for addressing the issue. On the other hand, this is quite the political football. Don’t poor Americans have plenty of electronics (a bad argument)? But, as Joseph Stiglitz notes in the article, how can one of the wealthiest countries in the world have 1 out of every 6 residents living below the poverty line?

Inequality in American schools: students in certain states compare well with international leaders, those in other states do not

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Where American students go to school matters as those in certain states score comparably to international leaders while students living in other states don’t do as well:

The average TIMSS score is a 500, and the test uses four benchmarks—low, intermediate, high, and advanced—to describe student scores. In math, two-thirds of U.S. states scored above the TIMSS average…

Massachusetts was the highest-scoring state in math, coming in behind four educational systems—Republic of Korea, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, and Hong Kong—and outranking 42 education systems. The lowest-ranking state, Alabama, outperformed only 19 educational systems…

In science, 47 states scored above the TIMMS average…

Massachusetts and Vermont outperformed 43 educational systems, while the District of Columbia ranked above only 14 educational systems. Singapore was the only education system to outrank all U.S. states.

This isn’t a new argument. The documentary Waiting for Superman raises a similar question: do we want children’s education to rest primarily on where they live, a factor over which they have little control? A Time story on education in Finland a few years ago suggested they had a different approach: raise rest scores and education overall by helping the students at the bottom. The United States and some other countries use the opposite approach where they provide resources to the best students to help them achieve even more. Both approaches can lead to higher average test scores but they would lead to different levels of variation in scores. In other words, how much of a gap between the higher and lower scorers is desirable for a society? Of course, this could go far more local than the state level. For example, some public schools in Chicago are among the best in the states while others in the city are among those that struggle the most.

This does reinforce an idea from urban sociology: where people do and can live makes a big difference in their life outcomes. Live in an area with generally more wealthy people and the outcomes are likely to be better.