Social Problems 59(2)

Social Problems, May 2012: Volume 59, Issue 2

This School's Gone Downhill: Racial Change and Perceived School Quality among Whites
Kimberly A. Goyette, Danielle Farrie and Joshua Freely

Racial segregation in schools and neighborhoods in the United States is stark and persistent. The results of this research provide clues as to why it may be so enduring. We find that as predominantly white schools in the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area experience increases in black representation of up to seven percentage points during a four- to five-year period, white neighborhood residents are more likely to perceive that the quality of their schools has declined, despite the current conditions of the schools and in spite of changes in school characteristics. Our results are more consistent with racial threat theory than contact theory because they suggest that white residents may initially be threatened by racial change and judge declining school quality according to the racial change itself. As a consequence, white families may flee these integrating schools and neighborhoods, further contributing to school and neighborhood segregation.

An Opening in the Congregational Closet? Boundary-Bridging Culture and Membership Privileges for Gays and Lesbians in Christian Religious Congregations
Gary Adler

Openness to homosexuality at the congregational level of American religious life has only recently received scholarly attention. This research reports patterns of membership openness to gays and lesbians among American Christian congregations and synthesizes emerging hypotheses to explain such openness. Using data from the second wave of the National Congregations Study (Chaves 2007), multinomial logistic regression models demonstrate evidence for the importance of clergy characteristics, membership demographics, local context, local theological culture, and religious tradition. A boundary-bridging cultural model also conceptualizes how the bridging practices of congregations influence membership openness. Interfaith volunteering and interracial worship express an organizational approach to social boundaries that prioritizes diversity and openness. With a controversial social issue (homosexuality), and a relative lack of local organizational processes to deal with such an issue, boundary-bridging customs may shape the sexuality boundaries of congregations. This research develops knowledge of cultural processes and homosexuality within American religious congregations.

Unequal Motherhood: Racial-Ethnic and Socioeconomic Disparities in Cesarean Sections in the United States
Louise Marie Roth and Megan M. Henley

Disparities in cesarean rates in the United States represent an important social problem because cesareans are related to maternal deaths and to the high cost of American health care. There are pervasive racial-ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in maternity care as in health care more generally, yet there has been little scrutiny of how overuse of cesarean deliveries might be linked to these disparities. There are at least two possibilities when it comes to c-sections: black, Hispanic, Native American, and low socioeconomic status (SES) mothers could be less likely to have needed cesareans, leading to more negative outcomes for both mothers and babies, or they could be more likely to have medically unnecessary cesareans, leading to more negative outcomes as a result of the surgery itself. This research uses data on all recorded births in the United States in 2006 to analyze differences in the odds of a cesarean delivery by race-ethnicity and SES. The analysis reveals that non-Hispanic black, Hispanic/Latina, and Native American mothers are more likely to have cesarean deliveries than non-Hispanic white or Asian mothers. Also, after accounting for medical indications, increasing education is associated with a decline in odds of a cesarean delivery, especially for non-Hispanic whites. The results suggest that high cesarean rates are an indicator of low-quality maternity care, and that women with racial and socioeconomic advantages use them to avoid medically unnecessary cesarean deliveries rather than to request them.

Imprisonment and Infant Mortality
Christopher Wildeman

This article extends research on the consequences of parental incarceration for child well-being, the effects of mass imprisonment on black-white inequalities in child well-being, and the factors shaping black-white inequalities in infant mortality by considering the relationship between imprisonment and infant mortality, using individual- and state-level data from the United States, 1990 through 2003. Results using data from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) show that parental incarceration is associated with elevated early infant mortality risk and that partner violence moderates this relationship. Infants of recently incarcerated fathers who are not abusive have twice the mortality risk of other infants, but there is no association if the father was abusive. Results from state-level analyses show a positive association between the imprisonment rate and the total infant mortality rate, black infant mortality rate, and black-white inequality in the infant mortality rate. Assuming a causal effect, results show that had the imprisonment rate remained at its 1990 level, the 2003 infant mortality rate would have been 3.9 percent lower, black-white inequality in the infant mortality rate 8.8 percent lower. Thus, results imply that imprisonment may have health consequences that extend beyond ever-imprisoned men to their social correlates and that these health spillover effects are not limited to infectious disease.

Metropolitan Heterogeneity and Minority Neighborhood Attainment: Spatial Assimilation or Place Stratification?
Jeremy Pais, Scott J. South and Kyle Crowder

Using geo-referenced data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, in conjunction with decennial census data, this research examines metropolitan-area variation in the ability of residentially mobile blacks, Hispanics, and whites to convert their income into two types of neighborhood outcomes—neighborhood racial composition and neighborhood socioeconomic status. For destination tract racial composition, we find strong and near-universal support for the “weak version” of place stratification theory; relative to whites, the effect of individual income on the percent of the destination tract population that is non-Hispanic white is stronger for blacks and Hispanics, but even the highest earning minority group members move to tracts that are “less white” than the tracts that the highest-earning whites move to. In contrast, for moves into neighborhoods characterized by higher levels of average family income, we find substantial heterogeneity across metropolitan areas in minorities' capacity to convert income into neighborhood quality. A slight majority of metropolitan areas evince support for the “strong version” of place stratification theory, in which blacks and Hispanics are less able than whites to convert income into neighborhood socioeconomic status. However, a nontrivial number of metropolitan areas also evince support for spatial assimilation theory, where the highest-earning minorities achieve neighborhood parity with the highest-earning whites. Several metropolitan-area characteristics, including residential segregation, racial and ethnic composition, immigrant population size, poverty rates, and municipal fragmentation, emerge as significant predictors of minority-white differences in neighborhood attainment.

Choking on Modernity: A Human Ecology of Air Pollution
Richard York and Eugene A. Rosa

Ground-level air pollution has serious effects on the natural environment and human health, but it has not received the same attention in the sociological literature as the greenhouse gases polluting the upper atmosphere. To address questions about the effects of social structural forces on environmental impacts, we analyze cross-national time-series data (1990–2000) to assess influences on the emission of ground-level air pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and non-methane volatile organic compounds. Drawing on human ecological theory, we move beyond previous analyses by assessing demographic effects on pollution emissions in a nuanced way by dividing population into the number of households and average household size. We found that the number of households has a greater effect on SO2 emissions than average household size. This suggests that the effect of population on the environment is not simply due to its size and growth, but also to its distribution across households. The difference we found has important implications, since the global growth rate in the number of households is greater than the growth rate in population. Furthermore, while the population growth rate in less developed nations is over four times that in developed nations, the household growth rate is only double. This finding suggests that developed nations will contribute more to air pollution in the coming years than would be assumed based on population growth alone.