Inequality in the social services

This article analyzes national data on the institutionalized population and shows the different patterns for white and nonwhite children and adults. It considers and refutes explanations based on differential problems and needs and explores organizational mechanisms. It also marshals evidence to show how such proxies as race and class are employed by organizations to induce a rationing of diagnostic categories and of services. The outcome is downward drift, the propelling of minority and poor persons into failure-reinforcing institutions. Directions for change are indicated.     

Re-counting 'illiteracy': literacy skills in the sociology of social inequality

Recent media reports have repeated claims that there are very large numbers of illiterate people in Britain, seven million adults being the most common figure. The moral panic this engendered has helped to justify educational initiatives and greater public spending on basic skills. However, a closer investigation of definitions and measurements of illiteracy in major national studies reveals the peculiarity of this social construction of illiteracy. Not least, it is argued that the numbers actually suffering significant literacy deficits are much lower than reported. Partly because British sociology has given literacy little attention (despite the advent of the 'New Literacy Studies'), official accounts of illiteracy remain unduly 'normative', seriously under-estimating cultural differences like gender, ethnicity and class. A new classification of low literacy skills is proposed, with the intention of demonstrating connections with structural accounts of social inequality and sociological theory. Low levels of literacy skill remain important because they are related to other forms of social inequality, even when the number of people disadvantaged in this way is much smaller than previously claimed.     

Generalizing from social media data: a formal theory approach

ABSTRACT

Researchers increasingly draw on social media data to answer big questions about social patterns and dynamics. However, as with any data source, social media data present both opportunities and significant challenges. One major critique of social media data is that the data are not generalizable outside of the platforms from which the data originate. Problems of generalizability stem from non-universal participation rates on various platforms, demographically biased samples, as well as limited access to data based on infrastructural constraints and/or user privacy practices. We suggest that instead of empirical generalizability, social media data are theoretically generalizable in the formal theory tradition. Through a case example in which we use YouTube comments to test and extend a key tenet of identity theory, we show how social media data can instantiate theoretical variables and thus generalize to theoretical propositions. Mediated through formal theory, social media data maintain the capacity to address broad social questions while upholding methodological integrity.     

Gender inequality in mobile technology access: the role of economic and social development*

ABSTRACT

Digital inequality is a burgeoning field of study across disciplines, yet few papers address categorical digital inequality in cross-national samples. Using the only available cross-national data on access to Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) disaggregated by gender from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), I add to existing literature by examining factors associated with women’s unequal access to mobile phones across 51 countries. The largest of such samples, the ITU data demonstrates that the type and levels of gender inequality in mobile phone use are not consistent throughout countries. In fact, the distribution is quite variable, from incorporating a small-sample of nations where women have marginally higher access, to sub-samples close to parity, to a larger sub-sample where women are at a substantial disadvantage. Using Quantile Regression Methods to assess these variations, I test how major gender and international development theories inform inequality patterns. My findings suggest that women’s wellbeing, as measured by their access to modern contraception (i.e., reproductive autonomy), overwhelmingly promotes women’s relative access to mobile phones, regardless of preexisting levels of access. Other perspectives like the growth imperative and world polity theory show some staggered associations along the distribution that remain substantively inconclusive.     

Measuring inequality of opportunity with imperfect data: the case of Turkey

The measurement of inequality of opportunity has hitherto not been attempted in a number of countries because of data limitations. This paper proposes two alternative approaches to circumventing the missing data problems in countries where a demographic and health survey (DHS) and an ancillary household expenditure survey are available. One method relies only on the DHS, and constructs a wealth index as a measure of economic advantage. The alternative method imputes consumption from the ancillary survey into the DHS. In both cases, we compute a lower bound estimator of the share of (ex-ante) inequality of opportunity in total inequality. Parametric and non-parametric estimates are calculated for each method, and the parametric approach is shown to yield preferable lower-bound measures. In an application to the sample of ever-married women aged 30–49 in Turkey, inequality of opportunity accounts for at least 26% (31%) of overall inequality in imputed consumption (the wealth index).     

Class,gender and generation matter: using the concept of social generation to study inequality and social change

This article highlights how concepts from the sociology of generations can facilitate new understandings of the processes by which social inequalities are made and perpetuated in the lives of young people. There is a tendency in some youth research for inequality to be conceptualised too simplistically, as a process of reproduction that remains stable over time. Hence, continuing inequality is weighed as evidence against theories proposing social change. Using the sociology of generations, the article argues that social change and new risks are not facades behind which more real, and long-standing, forms of inequality are hidden, but are central to the way inequalities, including but not only by class, gender and race, are made in the conditions facing emerging generations of young people.     

Increasing health inequality in China: An empirical study with ordinal data

This paper employs a recently introduced method of income-health matrix to study health inequality in China. The method overcomes the problems associated with ordered self-reported health (SRH) responses when the conventional tools of inequality analysis are used. Applying the new method to the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data, we find that over the study period of thirteen years, health inequality has increased by more than one hundred percent in spite of the multifold increase in average income. We conclude that the most likely explanations for the recent increase in China’s health inequality are: aging population, worsening income inequality and poverty, division between urban and rural, and environment deterioration.     

Measuring the drivers of gender inequality and their impact on development: the role of discriminatory social institutions

This paper highlights the key role of discriminatory social institutions – formal and informal laws, social norms, and practices – as the underlying drivers of gender inequality. Using the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) from the OECD Development Centre, this paper assesses the cost of gender-based discrimination in social institutions for economic and human development. Quantifying such complex issues is a powerful lever for advocacy, where rights-based arguments have tended to gain less traction. The paper provides evidence that measuring the invisible is feasible and critical to position social norms on the policy radar. It demonstrates that any truly transformative post-2015 development agenda must take into account how such inequalities impact the development pathways of women and girls across their entire life course, limiting their rights and empowerment opportunities.     

Clearing the FOG: Fuzzy,overlapping groups for social networks

Humans are well known to belong to many associative groups simultaneously, with various levels of affiliation. However, most group detection algorithms for social networks impose a strict partitioning on nodes, forcing entities to belong to a single group. Link analysis research has produced several methods which detect multiple memberships but force equal membership. This paper extends these approaches by introducing the FOG framework, a stochastic model and group detection algorithm for fuzzy, overlapping groups. We apply our algorithm to both link data and network data, where we use a random walk approach to generate rich links from networks. The results demonstrate that not only can fuzzy groups be located, but also that the strength of membership in a group and the fraction of individuals with exclusive membership are highly informative of emerging group dynamics.     

Kudos make you run! How runners influence each other on the online social network Strava

Strava is the largest online social network for athletes. We used Strava’s big data to investigate how runners in the same virtual Strava club influenced each other’s running behavior. We hypothesized that receiving kudos on recorded activities would spur exercise rates, and that the running behavior of clubmates to whom ego gave kudos would serve as a motivational example. We focused on five different Strava clubs that functioned as a virtual extension of real-life Dutch running clubs with a total of 329 members. Using data on kudos and recorded activities, we constructed a longitudinal dataset of complete networks and behavior over 11 periods with a one-month time window. We tested our hypotheses using SIENA. We found that receiving kudos induced runners to run more and more often. Moreover, athletes tended to adjust their running behavior to that of their ‘kudos-friends’ (i.e., those to whom they gave kudos). Contrary to our expectation, kudos-friends who ran more and more often than ego were not the most influential. If anything, the reverse was true; athletes were more likely to come to resemble the running behavior of their kudos-friends who ran less and less often.     

Racial inequality and social control: Historical and contemporary patterns in the U.S. South

Research dealing with disproportionate criminality, arrest, and incarceration among African Americans has tended to emphasize cultural, familial, and structural differences between racial groups while at the same time neglecting patterns and processes of race‐ and class‐based antagonism and subordination that are central, especially in the case of the U.S. South historically. We attempt to address this limitation by posing a model of the contemporary black‐white arrest differential across counties of one southern state. The model itself takes into consideration class‐ and race‐based subordination processes and their impact on local levels of stratification and arrest. Results suggest the continuing influence of racial competition and class dynamics. Racial competition enhances the arrest gap by disproportionately increasing unemployment and family dissolution among African Americans. The existence of a strong and concentrated traditional elite is shown to depress the racial gap, presumably by increasing poverty, unemployment, and family dissolution for both groups or by shaping what it means to go to jail, especially for blacks. In general, the arguments and findings presented suggest that criminological literature and theorizing should take note of local racial and political‐economic processes that, through the perpetuation of race and class inequality, reproduce disparate patterns of criminality, arrest, and incarceration.     

Investigating the role of multilevel social capital in ethnic income inequality in the Chinese labour market

This study examines to what extent individual- and county-level social capital respectively and jointly explain the Chinese ethnic income inequality. Using two waves of the Chinese General Social Survey data, social capital is operationalised into extensivity, upper reachability, mean prestige, and range via the position generator. Results show that social capital is unevenly distributed along the ethnic line in China, minorities are in disadvantaged position in accessing social capital, especially the number of occupation accessed and mean occupational prestige, compared with Han. When cross-level interactions are taken into account, with the increase of county-level social capital, its positive effect on minorities’ income attenuates while it become stronger for Han’s income. The differential returns of social capital on income between minorities and Han may be attributable to the mean prestige of their accessed position networks. Finally, the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analysis uncovers that when all variables are controlled for, there is still approximately 24 % of the income gap between minorities and Han remained unexplained, indicating the severe ethnic wage penalty minorities are facing in the Chinese labour market.     

A note on missing network data in the general social survey

There is very little network data missing on respondents to the 1985 General Social Survey. Missing data on relations between discussion patterns pose the greatest problem but the unknown relations are strongly associated with relations known to be weak. The association between missing and weak relations remains strong after controls for the number, strength, and nature of a respondent's discussion relations. Moreover, the association remains strong across different kinds of respondents despite significant tendencies for certain kinds of respondents to have provided incomplete network data. The implication is that the missing network data can be replaced with quantitative data indicating a weak relation.     

Gender inequality and inter-household economic inequality in emerging economies: exploring the relationship

While most emerging economies have been characterised by persistence/growth of inter-household economic inequality in recent decades, and simultaneous poor performance on gender equality, the intersecting relationship between these two trends so far has not received much attention. This article is an initial attempt look at this relationship, showing how gender inequality has both contributed to, and been affected by, growing economic inequality. It focuses on eight emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Mexico, Indonesia, and Turkey (dubbed the BRICSAMIT countries). The article analyses Gini coefficient trends and Global Gender Gap Index trends, and draws in addition on insights gained from seven exploratory interviews with Oxfam colleagues and partners working on women's rights in the considered countries. It concludes with a reflection on the possible future policy agenda that would allow one to simultaneously address the issues of gender inequality and economic inequality in the analysed countries.     

Inequality and the time structure of earnings: evidence from Germany

This paper studies the relationships between annual and subannual inequality and mobility during the course of the year. We apply an exact decomposition framework as outlined in Wodon and Yitzhaki (Econ Bull 4:1–8, 2003), and in Yitzhaki and Wodon (Research on Economic Inequality 12:179–199, 2004). Earnings records of pension insurants in Germany serve as the database. The long time horizon of our database allows us to investigate the stability and robustness of the parameters of the decomposition over time. Specifically, we show that the mobility component of the decomposition, as measured by Gini correlation coefficients, changes over the observation period. This makes it difficult to predict the impact of the income accounting period on inequality in a more general context. Thus, it is of paramount importance to use income data from a uniform accounting period in distributional analyses.