Browsing by Subject "Social stratification"

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Early life parental losses and the timing of family formation events in young adulthood
(2022-10-06) Saunders, Randi Elizabeth; Umberson, Debra
Demographic differences in patterns of family formation, including the timing of key family formation events such as union formation and the transition to parenthood, are well-documented. These differences reflect and contribute to cycles of inequality through their consequences for educational attainment, family stability, and labor force participation. An under-explored contributor to intergenerational transmission of inequality is differential exposure to early family losses across racial groups. Using data from a nationally representative longitudinal panel study, this paper examines how the loss of a parent prior to age 18 contributes to the timing of key family formation milestones during the transition to adulthood. Results indicate that early parental deaths are significantly associated with changes in the timing of first union formation and the transition to parenthood across racial groups, with maternal deaths strongly contributing to accelerated union formation, particularly among Black Americans.
"Juntos pero no revueltos" : the influence of the social stratification system on urban densification patterns in Bogotá, Colombia
(2017-05) Yunda, Juan Guillermo; Sletto, Bjørn; Jiao, Junfeng; Wegmann, Jacob; Lara, Fernando; Irazábal, Clara
From the 1950s to the 1970s, Bogotá, Colombia was one of the fastest growing cities in the world. During this period, the city became characterized by extreme social and geographic polarization between rural migrants and urban elites. This polarization was caused by a lack of development control as well as planning policies that encouraged social and spatial segregation. Social elites primarily lived in suburban neighborhoods in the north of Bogotá, which were well served by municipal infrastructure and enjoying easy access to services and employment opportunities. Low-skilled rural migrants settled in informal neighborhoods in the south that had poor municipal services and were close to environmentally polluted areas and far from the central business districts. Faced with the prospect of continuing, ungovernable urban sprawl led by both the formal and informal sector, in 1979 the city implemented a set of growth control and densification policies. However, thirty-five years later these policies have failed to halt or reverse the uneven development of the city. I argue that the unintended outcomes of the growth management policies are largely due to private sector interests and actions, which in turn vi are influenced by social equity policies. To demonstrate this, I correlated the recent densification projects with the so-called Stratification system. This system separates the city into six levels based on built form characteristics to identify groups with different income levels, providing a proxy for the analysis of socio-spatial segregation patterns. In addition, I explored the behaviors and attitudes of urban development agents through interviews and analysis of planning documents. I found that there is a statistically significant correlation between the Stratification zones and the densification patterns shaped, in part, by the influence of the private sector over local land-use and density regulations. This influence of developers has led to a transformation of the built form that is distinguished by uneven density levels, access to services and employment, and concentrations of poverty. Because of this complex articulation of planning and social policies with private sector interests and actions, Bogotá’s low income residents are experiencing unpredictable patterns of disinvestment, overcrowding, revitalization or dislocation in their neighborhoods.
Social inequalities in health : an institutional perspective
(2018-08-10) Gutierrez, Carmen Marie; Pettit, Becky, 1970-; Kirk, David; Rose, Mary; Umbeson, Debra
Since the mid-20th century, U.S. healthcare policies have required working-age adults to access health insurance through labor market, marriage, and family institutions. These policy arrangements helped employed, married, and parenting adults gain coverage through the benefits derived from their institutional attachments, but offered unemployed, unmarried, and childless adults little protection against the risk of being uninsured. As the pathways expected to provide access to health insurance are themselves highly stratified, coverage was systematically lower for certain segments of the population, including: men, people of color, and adults with low levels of formal schooling. Recent changes to U.S. healthcare policy prompted by the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), however, provide adults with a new pathway for obtaining health insurance decoupled from their labor market, marriage, and family attachments. By introducing a new route for adults to obtain health insurance outside of stratifying institutions, the ACA provides a history opportunity to consider the institutional determinants of health and draws attention to the centrality of institutions for our knowledge of health inequalities. I therefore leverage the timing of the ACA’s implementation as a “natural experiment” to investigate how institutions affect health. In three substantive chapters, I use data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) to explore the extent to which institutions generate inequalities in outcomes related to health insurance, health care, and health status. Results from these studies show that the ACA produced a number of desirable outcomes in just the first three years following implementation of its key provisions. First, the ACA helped close longtime gaps in health insurance coverage across gender, race and ethnicity, and education. Second, previously uninsured adults experienced substantial improvements in health care and health status. Third, the ACA exhibited large and profound benefits for low-income men with a history of incarceration. Together, these results demonstrate how the ACA raised the floor of health by improving a variety of outcomes for the population’s most disadvantaged groups. In the context of a dramatic and precarious shift in the U.S. healthcare system, this dissertation also has significant methodological and policy relevance.
The structural and social correlates of the learning disability label during high school
(2012-08) Shifrer, Dara Renee; Muller, Chandra; Riegle-Crumb, Catherine; Umberson, Debra; Raley, R. Kelly; Hummer, Robert
Educational attainment is a key component of occupational attainment and social mobility in America. Special education is a policy intervention geared toward ensuring equal educational opportunities for students distinctive from the majority. Students labeled with learning disabilities (LDs) comprise about half of the special education population, and are typically assigned the LD label for achievement levels that are lower than would be expected given their IQ. Although they have average or high IQs, students labeled with an LD continue to experience disparities in educational outcomes. In this dissertation, I use sociological perspectives and a large nationally representative dataset, The Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, to investigate the social and structural roots of the LD label, and to explore ways in which the LD label produces stigma or stratification during high school. In general, I find that (1) the disproportionate labeling of various status groups is indicative of the social and structural roots of the LD label, and that the process of assigning the LD label may not be uniform across schools; (2) labeled students have poorer educational outcomes than even unlabeled students who achieved at similar levels in early high school; (3) stigma related to the LD label is suggested by parents’ and particularly teachers’ much lower educational expectations for labeled students than for similar students not labeled with disability; (4) stratification related to the LD label is suggested by the placement of labeled students into lower levels of coursework than unlabeled students who performed similarly in a comparable level of coursework during the prior year; and (5) stigma and stratification related to the LD label are magnified among labeled students who are more socially advantaged, or who are higher achieving. Overall, the results suggest that the experiences of students labeled with an LD can be improved by addressing these social and structural factors that differentiate the likelihood of carrying the LD label, and have negative implications for labeled students’ social and academic experiences during high school.
Training for local labor in a global economy : local labor markets, high school course offerings, and males' and females' education and early labor market outcomes
(2015-05) Sutton, April Marie; Muller, Chandra; Riegle-Crumb, Catherine; Raley, R. Kelly; Lin, Ken-Hou; Glass, Jennifer
Debates about the best type of high school training for labor market success have heightened as the nation strives to recover from the Great Recession and maintain its position in the global economy. Some scholars and policymakers call for increased academic intensification of high school curricula while others prescribe a renewed emphasis on vocational coursework that prepares students for sub-baccalaureate jobs. Both camps tend to ignore the local nature of schools and the uneven distribution of sub-baccalaureate jobs across local economies. The debate has also been gender-neutral even though well-paying sub-baccalaureate work lies primarily in male-dominated, blue-collar occupations. In this dissertation, I highlight these local economic and gendered dimensions of the high school training debate that have been neglected in academic research and policy discussions. Using the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), a nationally representative sample of high school sophomores, this dissertation investigates the relationships among local labor markets, high school course offerings, and males’ and females’ education and early labor market outcomes. The first analytic chapter finds that students attending high schools in local labor markets with higher concentrations of sub-baccalaureate jobs take greater numbers of career and technical education (CTE) courses and are less likely to take advanced academic math courses than students in local labor markets with lower concentrations of these jobs. Their course-taking patterns are largely a function of their schools offering greater numbers of CTE courses and providing a less rigorous academic curriculum. High-achievers face the greatest advanced math course-taking penalties. The remainder of this dissertation examines the gendered consequences of linking high school training to local jobs in places that rely more heavily on blue-collar work. I find that a greater emphasis on blue-collar courses and weaker college-preparatory curriculum in schools in these communities do not appear to harm the labor market outcomes of men in early adulthood. However, results suggest severe postsecondary and labor market penalties for young women. Overall, this dissertation highlights a local economic dimension of (gendered) opportunities for educational and occupational success. It points to schools—as gatekeepers to skills training and embedded within communities—as an important force in this stratification process.