Medical Adaptation to Academic Pressure: Schooling, Stimulant Use, and Socioeconomic Status
Marissa D. King, Jennifer Jennings, and Jason M. Fletcher
Despite the rise of medical interventions to address behavioral issues in childhood, the social determinants of their use remain poorly understood. By analyzing a dataset that includes the majority of prescriptions written for stimulants in the United States, we find a substantial effect of schooling on stimulant use. In middle and high school, adolescents are roughly 30 percent more likely to have a stimulant prescription filled during the school year than during the summer. Socioeconomically advantaged children are more likely than their less advantaged peers to selectively use stimulants only during the academic year. These differences persist when we compare higher and lower socioeconomic status children seeing the same doctors. We link these responses to academic pressure by exploiting variation between states in educational accountability system stringency. We find the largest differences in school year versus summer stimulant use in states with more accountability pressure. School-based selective stimulant use is most common among economically advantaged children living in states with strict accountability policies. Our study uncovers a new pathway through which medical interventions may act as a resource for higher socioeconomic status families to transmit educational advantages to their children, either intentionally or unwittingly.
Suspending Progress: Collateral Consequences of Exclusionary Punishment in Public Schools
Brea L. Perry and Edward W. Morris
An influential literature in criminology has identified indirect “collateral consequences” of mass imprisonment. We extend this criminological perspective to the context of the U.S. education system, conceptualizing exclusionary discipline practices (i.e., out-of-school suspension) as a manifestation of intensified social control in schools. Similar to patterns of family and community decline associated with mass incarceration, we theorize that exclusionary discipline policies have indirect adverse effects on non-suspended students in punitive schools. Using a large hierarchical and longitudinal dataset consisting of student and school records, we examine the effect of suspension on reading and math achievement. Our findings suggest that higher levels of exclusionary discipline within schools over time generate collateral damage, negatively affecting the academic achievement of non-suspended students in punitive contexts. This effect is strongest in schools with high levels of exclusionary discipline and schools with low levels of violence, although the adverse effect of exclusionary discipline is evident in even the most disorganized and hostile school environments. Our results level a strong argument against excessively punitive school policies and suggest the need for alternative means of establishing a disciplined environment through social integration.
Network Ecology and Adolescent Social Structure
Daniel A. McFarland, James Moody, David Diehl, Jeffrey A. Smith, and Reuben J. Thomas
Adolescent societies—whether arising from weak, short-term classroom friendships or from close, long-term friendships—exhibit various levels of network clustering, segregation, and hierarchy. Some are rank-ordered caste systems and others are flat, cliquish worlds. Explaining the source of such structural variation remains a challenge, however, because global network features are generally treated as the agglomeration of micro-level tie-formation mechanisms, namely balance, homophily, and dominance. How do the same micro-mechanisms generate significant variation in global network structures? To answer this question we propose and test a network ecological theory that specifies the ways features of organizational environments moderate the expression of tie-formation processes, thereby generating variability in global network structures across settings. We develop this argument using longitudinal friendship data on schools (Add Health study) and classrooms (Classroom Engagement study), and by extending exponential random graph models to the study of multiple societies over time.
Protest on the Fly: Toward a Theory of Spontaneity in the Dynamics of Protest and Social Movements
David A. Snow and Dana M. Moss
This article reexamines spontaneity as an important, albeit neglected, mechanism in collective action dynamics, and elaborates on its operation and effects in protest events and social movements. We do not presume that spontaneity is routinely at play in all collective actions. Rather, based on our grounded analysis of historical and ethnographic data, we contend that spontaneity is triggered by certain conditions: nonhierarchical organization; uncertain/ambiguous moments and events; behavioral/emotional priming; and certain ecological/spatial factors. We conclude by elaborating why the activation of spontaneous actions matters in shaping the course and character of protest events and movements, and we suggest that spontaneity be resuscitated in the study of collective action and everyday life more generally.
Political Polarization as a Social Movement Outcome: 1960s Klan Activism and Its Enduring Impact on Political Realignment in Southern Counties, 1960 to 2000
Rory McVeigh, David Cunningham, and Justin Farrell
Radical social movements can exacerbate tensions in local settings while drawing attention to how movement goals align with political party agendas. Short-term movement influence on voting outcomes can endure when orientations toward the movement disrupt social ties, embedding individuals within new discussion networks that reinforce new partisan loyalties. To demonstrate this dynamic, we employ longitudinal data to show that increases in Republican voting, across several different time intervals, were most pronounced in southern counties where the Ku Klux Klan had been active in the 1960s. In an individual-level analysis of voting intent, we show that decades after the Klan declined, racial attitudes map onto party voting among southern voters, but only in counties where the Klan had been active.
Formal Rights and Informal Privileges for Same-Sex Couples: Evidence from a National Survey Experiment
Long Doan, Annalise Loehr, and Lisa R. Miller
Attitudes toward gay rights have liberalized over the past few decades, but scholars know less about the extent to which individuals in the United States exhibit subtle forms of prejudice toward lesbians and gays. To help address this issue, we offer a conceptualization of formal rights and informal privileges. Using original data from a nationally representative survey experiment, we examine whether people distinguish between formal rights (e.g., partnership benefits) and informal privileges (e.g., public displays of affection) in their attitudes toward same-sex couples. Results show that heterosexuals are as willing to extend formal rights to same-sex couples as they are to unmarried heterosexual couples. However, they are less willing to grant informal privileges. Lesbians and gays are more willing to extend formal rights to same-sex couples, but they too are sometimes more supportive of informal privileges for heterosexual couples. We also find that heterosexuals’ attitudes toward marriage more closely align with their attitudes toward informal privileges than formal rights, whereas lesbians and gays view marriage similarly to both formal rights and informal privileges. Our findings highlight the need to examine multiple dimensions of sexual prejudice to help understand how informal types of prejudice persist as minority groups receive formal rights.
Racial Inequality Trends and the Intergenerational Persistence of Income and Family Structure
Deirdre Bloome
Racial disparity in family incomes remained remarkably stable over the past 40 years in the United States despite major legal and social reforms. Previous scholarship presents two primary explanations for persistent inequality through a period of progressive change. One highlights continuity: because socioeconomic status is transmitted from parents to children, disparities created through histories of discrimination and opportunity denial may dissipate slowly. The second highlights change: because family income results from joining individual earnings in family units, changing family compositions can offset individuals’ changing economic chances. I examine whether black-white family income inequality trends are better characterized by the persistence of existing disadvantage (continuity) or shifting forms of disadvantage (change). I combine cross-sectional and panel analysis using Current Population Survey, Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Census, and National Vital Statistics data. Results suggest that African Americans experience relatively extreme intergenerational continuity (low upward mobility) and discontinuity (high downward mobility); both helped maintain racial inequality. Yet, intergenerational discontinuities allow new forms of disadvantage to emerge. On net, racial inequality trends are better characterized by changing forms of disadvantage than by continuity. Economic trends were equalizing but demographic trends were disequalizing; as family structures shifted, family incomes did not fully reflect labor-market gains.
House of Green Cards: Statistical or Preference-Based Inequality in the Employment of Foreign Nationals
Ben A. Rissing and Emilio J. Castilla
Racial disparity in family incomes remained remarkably stable over the past 40 years in the United States despite major legal and social reforms. Previous scholarship presents two primary explanations for persistent inequality through a period of progressive change. One highlights continuity: because socioeconomic status is transmitted from parents to children, disparities created through histories of discrimination and opportunity denial may dissipate slowly. The second highlights change: because family income results from joining individual earnings in family units, changing family compositions can offset individuals’ changing economic chances. I examine whether black-white family income inequality trends are better characterized by the persistence of existing disadvantage (continuity) or shifting forms of disadvantage (change). I combine cross-sectional and panel analysis using Current Population Survey, Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Census, and National Vital Statistics data. Results suggest that African Americans experience relatively extreme intergenerational continuity (low upward mobility) and discontinuity (high downward mobility); both helped maintain racial inequality. Yet, intergenerational discontinuities allow new forms of disadvantage to emerge. On net, racial inequality trends are better characterized by changing forms of disadvantage than by continuity. Economic trends were equalizing but demographic trends were disequalizing; as family structures shifted, family incomes did not fully reflect labor-market gains.
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Trust Radius versus Trust Level: Radius of Trust as a Distinct Trust Construct
André van Hoorn
In their October 2011 ASR article, “How General Is Trust in ‘Most People’? Solving the Radius of Trust Problem,” Delhey, Newton, and Welzel pioneer the measurement of trust radius, defined as the width of the circle of people among whom a certain trust level exists. One key finding of their study is that trust radius correlates so strongly with out-group trust level that the two are essentially identical constructs; this clashes with standard theory’s finding that trust level and trust radius are distinct trust constructs. This result proves to be erroneous, however, due to a mistaken label. I seek to correct this labeling error and find that trust radius is, in fact, a separate trust construct. Trust radius differs from established trust level constructs such as level of trust in most people and level of out-group trust, not only theoretically but empirically as well.
The Radius of Trust Problem Remains Resolved
Jan Delhey, Kenneth Newton, and Christian Welzel
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