AJS; American Journal of Sociology

Research in the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status (SES) consistently shows that the SES of one generation benefits the next. Demographic processes shape the kin structures that serve as conduits for the transmission of SES. Few studies have examined these trends together to describe experiences in evolving kin structures throughout the life course and across generations. This article applies demographic techniques to fertility, marital, and mortality data from three generations in the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics to simulate the amount of time young adults would spend within consequential kin structures...

This paper examines causal sibling spillover effects among students from different family backgrounds in elementary and middle school. Family backgrounds are captured by race, household structure, mothers' educational attainment, and school poverty. Exploiting discontinuities in school starting age created by North Carolina school-entry laws, we adopt a quasi-experimental approach and compare test scores of public school students whose older siblings were born shortly before and after the school-entry cutoff date...

Foundational urban social theories view heterogeneity of exposure to spatial and social contexts as essential aspects of the urban experience. In contrast, contemporary neighborhood research emphasizes the isolation of city dwellers - particularly residents of racially segregated neighborhoods. Using geospatial data on a sample of youth from the 2014-16 Columbus, OH-based Adolescent Health and Development in Context study, we explore the extent to which the neighborhood locations of everyday activities vary with respect to residential racial composition...

Using a probability-based sample from 39 U.S. states from a general health survey, the author evaluates popular claims of a "transgender tipping point" by estimating probabilities of identifying as transgender and gender nonconforming among cohorts of respondents born between 1935 and 2001. Respondents born after 1984 are significantly more likely to identify as transgender or gender nonconforming than respondents in earlier cohorts. However, cohort changes in identification as transgender and gender nonconforming vary along lines of sex assigned at birth, race/ethnicity, and college attendance...

The equity-efficiency trade-off and cumulative return theories predict larger returns to school spending in areas with higher previous investment in children. Equity-not efficiency-is therefore used to justify progressive school funding: spending more in communities with fewer financial resources. Yet it remains unclear how returns to school spending vary across areas by previous investment. Using county-level panel data for 2009-18 from the Stanford Education Data Archive, the Census Finance Survey, and National Vital Statistics, the authors estimate achievement returns to school spending and test whether returns vary between counties with low and high levels of initial human capital (measured as birth weight), child poverty, and previous spending...

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The United States is currently in the midst of a long, historic cultural transformation-redefining our collective representation to be inclusive of diverse sexual and gender identities. A core logic advancing this inclusion is to discursively recognize an expanded set of discrete, deconstructed identities-gay and lesbian expands to LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTQIA1, and so on. But a newer logic stipulates that inclusion arises through using constructive identities that encompass many fluid experiences under a single term (e...

Why do some people adapt successfully to change while others do not? We examine this question in the context of a severe HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa, where adapting (or not) to social change has borne life and death consequences. Applying an age-period-cohort lens to the analysis of qualitative life history interviews among middle-aged and older adults, we consider the role of the life course and gendered sexuality in informing Africans' strategies of action, or inaction, and in differentially driving and stalling change in each cohort in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic...

This article draws on data from a twelve-year longitudinal qualitative interview study of forty-five white women who started college in 2004 at a public flagship university in the American Midwest. We compare the class position of women's parents (captured when women began college) to women's own adult class position at age 30. Despite substantial downward mobility and modest upward mobility, we find that white women's social class was relatively sticky; that is, even downwardly mobile white women from privileged families did not fall far, while upwardly mobile white women from less privileged families were blocked from the top of the class structure...

Understanding the consequences of marital experiences for individual mental health provides insight into how social relationships shape individual wellbeing. Using newly available, clinically validated diagnostic interviews with more than 10,000 respondents integrated with the longitudinal Chitwan Valley Family Study (CVFS), we assess the associations between marital experiences, intimate partner violence (IPV), and mental health and how they differ by gender in a setting of universal marriage-Nepal. Particularly novel, we integrate measures of arranged marriage, IPV, and marital quality into a single comprehensive analysis of the marital experiences shaping subsequent depression...

We propose a new methodological framework for studying status exchange in marriage. As shown in recent debates on status-race or status-beauty exchange, the conventional loglinear modeling approach is prone to controversial specifications and alternative interpretations. In this study, we develop a simple method - the Exchange Index - with cohort-and-gender-specific relative status measures, statistical distribution balancing, and nonparametric matching. While allowing for multiple covariate controls, our Exchange Index measures the average difference in spouse's status between intermarriages and matched ingroup marriages...

In popular accounts, stories of environmental refugees convey a bleak picture of the impacts of climate change on migration. Scholarly research is less conclusive, with studies finding varying effects. This paper uses an agent-based model (ABM) of land use, social networks, and household dynamics to examine how extreme floods and droughts affect migration in Northeast Thailand. The ABM explicitly models the dynamic and interactive pathways through which climate-migration relationships might operate, including coupled out and return streams...

Previous research has described the criminal justice system as a "labor market institution." In recent years, however, research on the relationship between the criminal justice system and the labor market has focused primarily on the negative impact of criminal justice involvement on an individual's ability to find work post-release. This article explores how workers' exposure to the criminal justice system is related to labor organization-a labor market institution through which workers in the United States have secured benefits for themselves and which, structurally, has mitigated income inequality...

Using time-varying, prospectively measured income in a nationally representative sample of Baby-Boomer men (the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth - 1979 [NLSY79]), we identify eight group-based trajectories of income between ages 25-49 and use multinomial treatment models to describe the associations between group-based income trajectories and mental and physical health at midlife. We find remarkable rigidity in income trajectories: less than 25% of our sample experiences significant upward or downward mobility between the ages of 25 to 49 and most who move remain or move into poverty...

Recent studies have reported a reversal of an earlier trend in income segregation in metropolitan regions, from a decline in the 1990s to an increase in the 2000-2010 decade. This finding reinforces concerns about the growing overall income inequality in the U.S. since the 1970s. Yet the evidence may be systematically biased to show an upward trend because the effective sample for the American Community Survey (ACS) is much smaller than it was for Census 2000, to which it is being compared. There is a possibility that the apparent changes in disparities across census tracts result partly from a higher level of sampling variation and bias due to the smaller sample...

Studies of residential segregation typically focus on its degree without questioning its scale and configuration. We study Southern cities in 1880 to emphasize the salience of these spatial dimensions. Distance-based and sequence indices can reflect spatial patterns but with some limitations, while geocoded 100% population data make possible more informative measures. One improvement is flexibility in spatial scale, ranging from adjacent buildings to whole districts of the city. Another is the ability to map patterns in fine detail...

Previous research on interaction behavior among organizations (resource exchange, collaboration, communication) has typically aggregated those behaviors over time as a network of organizational relationships. The authors instead study structural-temporal patterns in organizational exchange, focusing on the dynamics of reciprocation. Applying this lens to a community of Italian hospitals during 2003-7, the authors observe two mechanisms of interorganizational reciprocation: organizational embedding and resource dependence ...

Drawing on the social disorganization tradition and the social ecological perspective of Jane Jacobs, the authors hypothesize that neighborhoods composed of residents who intersect in space more frequently as a result of routine activities will exhibit higher levels of collective efficacy, intergenerational closure, and social network interaction and exchange. They develop this approach employing the concept of ecological networks-two-mode networks that indirectly link residents through spatial overlap in routine activities...

States redistribute wealth through two mechanisms: spending and taxation. Yet studies of the social determinants of redistribution typically focus exclusively on government spending. This article explores how one determinant of social spending-racial composition-influences preferences for, and the structure of, tax systems. First, analyses of state and local tax burden data indicate that an increasing proportion of Latinos within states is associated with more regressive tax systems. Second, evidence from a nationally representative survey experiment suggests that individual preferences for taxation may be influenced by changes in the racial composition of communities...

The economic effects of social structure are dependent on culture and must be understood in their cultural context. The authors demonstrate this with an analysis of the Liverpool slave trade. They show that as abolitionism became more salient in British culture, connections in a coinvestment network to both slavers and nonslavers mattered much more for predicting entry into the slave trade. As abolitionism rose, nonslavers in that public network gained relatively more influence than slavers, but the reverse was true in the private network of an elite social club...