December 2003, Volume 82: Number 2

Ben Fletcher, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This study examines the legacy of American slavery at the individual, intragenerational level by analyzing life-history data from roughly 1,400 ex-slaves and free blacks covering the antebellum and postbellum periods. We test a model of durable inequality that considers the potentially vicious circle created by status persistence across institutional regimes. Our findings suggest that the antebellum regime evidenced partial institutional reproduction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, owing to the fact that the antebellum distinction of free blacks and slaves had durable status effects long after emancipation, but over time, black status attainment became largely decoupled from the internal hierarchy of slavery. Mediating effects, for example, the Freedmen Bureau's educational interventions and the black diaspora, also served to curtail the reproduction of antebellum status. Implications are pursued with respect to both institutional theory and stratification research.

Racial Policy and Racial Conflict in the Urban United States, 1869-1924

Susan Olzak, Stanford University
Suzanne Shanahan, Duke University

This article extends existing explanations of racial conflict by suggesting how legislation and court rulings instigate processes of legitimation and competitive exclusion, which in turn affect the likelihood of racial violence. We argue that federal legislation and court cases that reinforced the white-nonwhite racial boundary stigmatized nonwhites and prompted whites to attack nonwhites. However, legislation and court rulings that dismantled segregation and eradicated discrimination against racial minorities also instigated racial violence, as whites mobilized efforts to contain competition. A final argument suggests that when legislation successfully restrains competition from a specific population, collective violence against that group will diminish. Using data on collective violence against Asians and African Americans from the 76 largest cities in the U.S. from 1869 through 1924, we find support for these three claims. In particular, we find that while immigration and economic competition raise levels of racial conflict, state policies concerning race also increase the rate of racial violence significantly.

Public Employment, Welfare Transfers, and Economic Well-Being across Local Populations: Does a Lean and Mean Government Benefit the Masses?

Linda Labao, Ohio State University
Gregory Hooks, Washington State University

This study examines state provisioning of social welfare and employment and its consequences for local economic well-being. Do a larger public sector and more generous social welfare transfers help or harm local populations? To address this question, we derive hypotheses from two competing social policy schools, neoliberal and radical political economy. We assess how claims from both schools operate on the ground, through an empirical test using data for county populations for Keynesian (1970-80) and post-Keynesian (1980-90) decades. Findings do not support neoliberal views that a leaner and meaner government benefits U.S. populations. Rather, economic well-being of the population at large declines where social programs are less generous to poor residents. In both Keynesian and post-Keynesian periods, the state remains important in reducing income inequality and, to some degree, in promoting income growth. Finally, we find important differences within public employment, with state and local government having less beneficial effects.

The Politics of Poverty: Left Political Institutions, the Welfare State, and Poverty

David Brady, Duke University

This study investigates the impact of left political institutions on a nation's amount of poverty. Specifically, the analysis tests three possible causal relationships: whether left political institutions affect poverty separately from the welfare state, channeled through the welfare state, or combined with the welfare state. These relationships are tested with an unbalanced panel analysis of 16 rich Western democracies from 1967 to 1997 (N = 73, 74), two measures of poverty, and eight measures of left political institutions. The results demonstrate that the strength of left political institutions has a significant, powerful negative impact on poverty. Specifically, left political institutions partially combine with and partially channel through the welfare state. Voter turnout and the cumulative historical power of left parties entirely channel through the welfare state to reduce poverty. The percent of votes for left parties, the percent of seats for left parties, wage coordination, neocorporatism, gross union density and employed union density partially combine with and partially channel through the welfare state to reduce poverty. While the welfare state remains a crucial determinant of poverty, left political institutions are essential to explanations of the comparative historical variation in poverty.

Segregation and School Violence

David Eitle, Florida International University
Tamela McNulty Eitle, University of Miami

While research exploring the consequences of desegregation and resegregation for academic achievement and intergroup attitudes and behavior has been prolific, scant attention has been paid to the impact that school segregation differences has had on school violence. Using data from the state of Florida Department of Education and the U.S. Bureau of the Census, we attempt to adjudicate between competing hypotheses about the nature of a relationship between segregation and school violence: (1) that segregation is associated with increased school violence; and (2) that segregation is associated with decreased school violence, especially under conditions of racial inequality. Results from a multilevel analysis show that increased school district segregation has a substantive negative association with school violence, particularly in contexts of greater community inequality, consistent with Pettigrew's (1971) observations about the contact hypothesis. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Faith and Works: Church-Based Social Capital Resources and African American Political Activism

R. Khari Brown, University of Michigan
R. Ronald E. Brown, Wayne State University

This study seeks to examine the relationship between church-based social capital resources and political activism among black Americans. Our results suggest that simply attending church does not provide enough social capital resources to propel blacks into voting and nonvoting political activities. Rather, it is largely those churches that espouse a civic culture where members are exposed to political discussions and are encouraged to be activists that lead to black political engagement. In addition, involvement in church committee life is important to black civic skill development (e.g., communication, writing, and organizing skills), which increases these church activists' competence and confidence to participate in costly and risky political acts. This study also sought to investigate the class composition of such politicized church networks. It is largely the case that such networks are stratified by socioeconomic status, such that middle-class blacks disproportionately hear political messages in church and serve as church activists.

Job Search with Organizational Size As a Signal

Henrich R. Greve, Norwegian School of Management BI
Takako Fujiwara-Greve, Norwegian School of Management BI and Keio University

It is in workers' interest to leave their jobs if better work can be found, but imperfect information on outside opportunities impedes their job search. We describe two theories on workers' search using the organizational size as a proxy for work characteristics and derive hypotheses on how the organizational size distribution in a labor market affects job separations. We test the hypotheses with NLSY 79 data on job separations, finding that diversity in organizational sizes affects worker mobility. Workers are more likely to move within counties with many organizations larger than their current one or many organizations of different sizes and are more likely to leave counties lacking these characteristics.

Social Capital and the Wages of Mexican Migrants: New Hypotheses and Tests

Michael B. Aguilera, Rice University
Douglas S. Massey, University of Pennsylvania

In this article, we develop hypotheses about the ways in which network ties influence wages and the circumstances under which social capital assumes greater or lesser importance in the determination of migrant earnings. We then test these hypotheses using data on male Mexican migrants gathered by the Mexican Migration Project. We find that social capital has both direct and indirect effects on migrant wages. Indirectly, social capital influences how a job is obtained and whether it is in the formal sector. Directly, having friends and relatives with migratory experience improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the job search to yield higher wages. Moreover, the effects of social capital on wages are greater for undocumented than documented migrants, reflecting the more tenuous labor market position of the former. These results confirm and extend social capital theory and underscore the importance of social networks in understanding the determination of migrant earnings.

Fairer Sex or Fairer System? Gender and Corruption Revisited

Hung-En Sung,Columbia University

Two recent influential studies found that larger representations of women in government reduced corruption. Assuming that the observed gender differentials were caused by women's inclinations toward honesty and the common good, both studies advocated increased female participation in government to combat corruption. This study argues that the observed association between gender and corruption is spurious and mainly caused by its context, liberal democracy ? a political system that promotes gender equality and better governance. Data favor this "fairer system" thesis.

Political Institutions, Minorities, and Punishment: A Pooled Cross-National Analysis of Imprisonment Rates

David Jacobs, Ohio State University
Richard Kleban, Ohio State University

Despite their plausibility, political explanations for incarceration rates have not been intensely investigated. Centralized democracies that reduce public influence by using corporatist methods to resolve disputes should have lower incarceration rates, but the opposite should be true in decentralized polities with federalist political arrangements where mass publics have greater control over punishment. Threat hypotheses are assessed by examining the effects of minority presence and economic inequality. This study uses a panel design to examine these effects on imprisonment rates in 13 of the most progressive democracies from 1970 to 1995. With the murder or overall crime rates, social disorganization, and additional indicators held constant, the presence of corporatist and federalist political arrangements explain cross-national differences in incarceration rates. The evidence suggests that internal racial or ethnic threat produces larger imprisonment rates as well. The findings indicate that a well-developed comparative political sociology of punishment should help us understand contrasts in the proportion of the population that is incarcerated in advanced democracies.

Does the Ethnicity of Offenders in Crime Scenarios Affect Public Perceptions of Crime Seriousness? A Randomized Survey Experiment in Israel

Sergio Herzog, University of Haifa

Research into public perceptions of crime seriousness is usually based on the method developed by Sellin and Wolfgang (1964), in which respondents are required to evaluate hypothetical crime scenarios. However, in most cases, offenses are presented summarily, with few or no details on the offenders. A review of the literature shows that the offender's ethnicity plays an important role in shaping the views of the public at large on crime issues. Using a randomized experiment, this study surveyed a large sample of Israeli citizens to determine whether the offender's ethnicity ? Jewish or Arab as the independent variable ? systematically affected their views of the seriousness of various offenses ? the dependent variables. In the overall sample, offender ethnicity was found to have an effect only on less serious offenses. However, when Jewish and Arab respondents were analyzed separately, significant differences were found, especially for interethnic offenses. The implications of the findings are discussed.

Selling Women Short: A Research Note on Gender Differences in Compensation on Wall Street

Louise Marie Roth, University of Arizona

Some research has suggested that, once all forms of segregation are controlled, there is no gender gap in earnings. However, other research suggests that substantial barriers to gender equality persist even within occupations. I suggest that institutional norms and market forces that determine compensation practices are likely to produce different results across professions. I hypothesize that gender inequality will persist on Wall Street even when men and women hold identical job titles. Using a cohort sample of securities professionals with highly similar human capital characteristics, I find statistically significant gender differences in 1997 earnings, controlling for background characteristics, human capital, and segregation by area of finance. I offer possible explanations for variation among professions, emphasizing the importance of institutional practices within the securities industry.

What Happens after the High School Years among Young Persons with Disabilities?

Thomas Wells, Brown University
Gary D. Sandefur, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dennis P. Hogan, Brown University

In this article, we examine the immediate post-high school years of adolescents with disabilities. Using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 and the National Longitudinal Transition Study of Special Education Students, 1987-1991, we examine the transition from adolescence to adulthood and uncover the specific factors that are associated with the likelihood of making various early transitions to adulthood. Our results reveal that disability and type of disability profoundly affect youths' immediate post-high school activities. In addition, family socioeconomic resources have a smaller impact on the transition to adulthood among adolescents with disabilities than among adolescents without disabilities. Many resources families use to increase education and to promote the transition to adulthood do not operate, effectively blocking the intergenerational transfer of socioeconomic privilege.