SOC 330 Exam 3 Pt 1

population pyramids (what do they show us?)

• shows distribution of a population by age and sex/gender

• typically calculated for a single country

dependency ratio: how calculated and what it tells us

(# people in country age 0-14 + # age 65+)/ (#people in a country ages 15-64) x 100

• measures pressure on productive workforce by comparing # of dependents to the working age population

life expectancy at birth in 1900 for Black and white males and females

white:

• male: 46.6

• female 48.7

black

• male: 32.5

• female: 33.5

life expectancy at birth for men and women in 2024

men: 76.5

women: 81.4

which racial/ethnic group has highest and lowest life expectancy at birth in 2021

highest: Asian 83.5

lowest: AIAN (American Indian/Alaskan Native) 65.2

purpose of book Golden Years by Deborah Carr

Unpack the ways that social inequalities affect nearly all aspects

• How long they live

• How much money they have in retirement years

• their physical and emotional health

• Social relationships

• Housing

• Neighborhood conditions

• ⁃ Whether they have the privilege of dying with dignity

how do disparities arise? what does she mean by social location?

result from an individual’s social “location”:

• Socioeconomic resources

• Gender

• Race and ethnicity

• All three are tightly connected to constraints and opportunities we face throughout life

group most and least likely to be in poverty at age 65+

most: hispanic (of any race) 19.8%

least: white alone (not hispanic) 7.7%

how does out social position affect our health and longevity?

Programs like Medicare or Medicaid cannot erase health disparities because they are the result of decades of disadvantages (or advantage) accumulating over one’s life course

what are the "rewards" in terms of health and longevity of high SES?

High socioeconomic status brings with it:

• money

• knowledge

• social connections

• good insurance & access to top-notch health care

  • access to multiple resources not available to many

cumulative inequality

• Advantage results in additional advantage and disadvantage result in further disadvantages

• This process plays out over decades so that modest inequalities earlier in life amplify over time

the 3 pathways by which advantage/disadvantage affect health and longevity

• stress

• health behaviors

• access to medical care

the roles of stress

The primary way that social and environmental factors accelerate or slow down the physiological changes that accompany aging

• Poverty, employment instability, microaggressions, systemic racism, strained relationships, neighborhood crime, domestic abuse

• Cortisol is key here

What are the 10 Americas?

What factors are they based on?

10 mutually exclusive + collectively exhaustive Americas comprising the entire US population

• all combinations of county and race and ethnicity, assigning each county and race and ethnicity combination to 1 of the 10 Americas

  • based on race and ethnicity + combination of geographical location, metropolitan status, income, and Black–White residential segregation

What is America 1 and what is America 10?

America 1: Asian

America 10: AIAN, West

What are the life expectancies of America 1 and 10? (Go to "assignments" and you'll find what you need.) 

America 1, America 10

• 2000: 83.1, 72.3

• 2010: 85.2, 71.2

• 2019: 86.0, 70.2

• 2020: 83.7, 64.8

• 2021: 84.0, 63.6

the range of income floors as determined by the groups in our class?

30,000 to 195,629 (pre-tax)

what are the official poverty thresholds for a family of 2, 3, and 4? (you can round up or down)

family 2: $21,600

family 3: $27,300

family 4: $33,000

know Tammy's Story from People Like Us the basics

Poor family in Ohio,Tammy grew up poor, is still poor, works at Burger King but walks because no car or license, people + kids treat her poorly = unhappy 

• wants to go to college and teach rather than depend on welfare/raise kids 

• Matt embarrassed by house/mother because low class, wants to go to college and pursue professional career

• Bo looks up to his brother, couch potato, wants to be like his brother (popular) 

who was Michael Harrington? What book did he write? What was it about?

writer and democratic socialist, wrote “The Other America” to describe what it's like to be poor in the US

who developed the poverty thresholds? Where was she born?

Mollie Orshansky, born 1915 in the Bronx

what is the “economy food plan”

designed for temporary or emergency use when funds are low

why did she multiply the cost of the “economy food plan” by 3 to create the poverty thresholds? why 3?

The Department of Agriculture's 1955 Household Food Consumption Survey showed that families spent about 1/3rd of their after-tax income on food

• Orshansky then multiplied the cost of economy food plan by 3 to construct the poverty thresholds

how did Orshansky describe the thresholds? What did she say about them?

thresholds are a measure of income inadequacy, not of income adequacy

% of single mother families living in poverty in 2022 (know approximate % for each group)

total: 31.3

native american: 42.6

black: 37.4

hispanic 35.9

white: 25

what happened to Linda Tirado after her book came out?

• Linda became a journalist/photojournalist

• Covered Minneapolis protests due to murder of George Floyd

• Had her press credentials showing

• Police shot her with a rubber bullet; hit in the right eye

challenges facing low-wage workers (Lessons from $2.00 a day)

Decreasing number of jobs for “unskilled” workers that pay a decent wage

• What’s available is often not full-time

• Do not include health insurance

• Do not include sick days or personal days

• Do not have regular hours

• No retirement benefits

• Available jobs don’t provide a comfortable standard of living

scheduling tactics low–wage employers use to deal with their bottom line

Workloading: when demand decreases, reduce employee’s hours (informal layoffs)

Just-in-time scheduling: if it gets busy on weeknight evenings, they move more workers to that shift (need to be always available)

On-call shifts: require workers to be available on certain days and times even if they are not called in to work

Allocation of work hours to reward or punish employees

(roughly) percentage of workers from 80 of the largest retailers who experience an oncall shift

28%

the types of scheduling problems experienced by lowwage workers and which ones are the commonly reported

• shift cancelled (15%)

• fewer than three days notice of schedule (17%)

• on-call shift (28%)

• clopening shift (50%)

number of days annually low–wage workers who are “on call” or experience last minute schedule changes have no childcare (either child(ren) left alone or with a sibling younger than 10 years old)

on call/last min changes = 15 days annually

(without on call/last min = 9 days)

know the impact of short notice and cancelled shifts associated on hunger hardship 

2+ week notice vs 0-2 day notice: 28% to 37%

no cancelled to cancelled: 29% to 42%

define ethnographic observation

immersing oneself in the lives and social worlds of people they want to understand

how did Lareau go about her research for the book?  When did the research begin?

• Started out with interviews with 88 families and selected 12 families for the ethnographic work

• Had a very large research team: field- workers, interviewers, coders

• The earliest phase of project began in 1990

which approach did Lareau largely take?

INDUCTIVE APPROACH

inductive research approach

Process by which scientists draw a general understanding of a social phenomenon through empirical observation.

Deductive research approach

Take what is already known about a social phenomenon and integrate it into a coherent argument that attempts to explain or predict that phenomenon in a way that can be tested.

Lareau’s measure of social class: what did it include? That is, what characteristics did she use to define social class?

Used a combination of education and characteristics of occupation

For the occupation, she evaluated:

• whether someone has supervisory or managerial authority over other

• workers, a key distinction in understanding hierarchy of workers

• Credentials: separated occupations with stringent educational requirements from those without

Lareau’s definition of middle–class families in her research

at least one parent is employed in a position that either entails substantial managerial authority or that draws on highly complex, educationally certified skills (i.e., college and college+) (Garrett Tallinger)

Lareau’s definition of working-class families in her research

neither parent is employed in a middle-class position and at least one parent is employed in a position with little or no managerial authority and that does not draw on highly complex, educationally certified skills (i.e., college and college +) (Tyrec Taylor)

the purpose and argument of Lareau’s book

• identifies the largely invisible ways that parents’ social class impacts children’s life experiences

• Argues that key elements of family life cohere to form a “cultural logic” of childrearing”

the two logics of childrearing and the social class with which each is associated

• Finds that middle-class parents adopt cultural logic stressing “concerted cultivation”

• Working-class and poor parents have a different cultural logic: “accomplishment of natural growth”

“concerted cultivation” (Table 1: Typology of Differences in Childrearing)

key elements:

• Parent actively fosters and assesses child's talents, opinions, and skills

organization of daily life

• Multiple child leisure activities orchestrated by adults

language use:

• Reasoning/directives

• Child contestation of adult statements

• Extended negotiations between parents and child

interventions in instituions:

• Criticisms and interventions on behalf of child

• Training of child to take on this role

consequences

• Emerging sense of entitlement on the part of the child

“accomplishment of natural growth” (Table 1: Typology of Differences in Childrearing)

key elements:

• Parent cares for child and allows child to grow

organization of daily life

• "Hanging out," particularly with kin, by child

language use:

• Directives

• Rare questioning or challenging of adults by child

• General acceptance by child of directives

interventions in instituions:

• Dependence on institutions

• Sense of powerlessness and frustration

• Conflict between child-rearing practices at home and at school

consequences

• Emerging sense of constraint on the part of the child

Infant mortality rate by race/ethnicity in Milwaukee

overall: 10.8

black: 15.9

multiracial: 6.3

hispanic: 6.3

asian: 5.7

white: 5.7

What did Christina Cross hear growing up?

• Eavesdropping: somehow family structure had to do with the problems

• “we had lost our way”: weren’t raising children in the same way as past

• Problem was the single-parent family (although the grown-ups also mentioned a scarcity of good jobs, lousy schools, discrimination)

% by race/ethnicity believing that "upbringing" a cause for SES gap between Blacks and whites

black: 60%

hispanic: 70%

white: 80%

who was Daniel Patrick Moynihan? What did he write?

• American politician, adviser to multiple conservative presidents, UN ambassador, fight against poverty

  • man shaped by the Depression, believed in the power of government to do good

  • focused on welfare, family policy, infrastructure

• the Moynihan Report

  • claims that unstable family life/”illegitimate” kids/”ghetto” environment causes negative impact on black families

  • believes in affirmative action

the puzzle that Cross attempts to solve in her book

• The well-being of Black children from two-parent families is substantially lower than that that of their white peers

• What could account for the Black-White disparity in the life chances of kids growing up in two-parent families?

the distinction between the "family resource perspective" and the "diverse family ecology framework

family structure => economic resources => parenting => child outcomes

vs

structural racism => family structure => parenting => child outcome AND economic resources impacting everything

2024 median incomes of Black and white married families

Black $122,000

White $144,000

Black–white difference in wealth of parents by time the children were adolescents

Black $27,700

White $106,800

know Tammy’s Story II: Update (what happened to Tammy, what happened to her two sons, etc.) 

Still works at Burger King but 20 min walk,Matt still looks down on his mom, Tammy is still hopeful 

• Matt didn’t finish college or high school = got a job to take care of his daughter/family 

• Bo was self employed/freelancer, unemployed 2 years but recovered drug addict with mom’s help 

  • Has partner and grandson