Academic Undermatch: How General and Specific Cultural Capital Structure Inequality

Recent literature has added another dimension to the well‐documented patterns of social class inequality in education: academic undermatch. Undermatch (which occurs when students attend institutions of lower selectivity than they are academically qualified to attend) is both widespread and unequal, with students from less advantaged families more likely to undermatch. Although proliferating, the research on undermatch has focused primarily on documenting the extent of, and less on exploring the mechanisms underlying, undermatch. Moreover, this literature has developed largely independent of the sociological research on cultural capital. Therefore, when scholars consider underlying mechanisms, they often focus narrowly on college‐specific information, without considering the broader cultural context in which students are embedded. Drawing on the literature on undermatch, as well as the sociological research on cultural capital, I differentiate between general and specific cultural capital. Moreover, instead of simply estimating whether students undermatch or not, I consider different types of undermatch. Results from the Educational Longitudinal Survey reveal that the effects of cultural capital are indeed heterogeneous, both with respect to its relationship to undermatch and its contribution to social class inequality. Findings have important implications for understanding undermatch and the role of cultural capital in reducing and reproducing social inequality.     

Social capital and economic integration of migrants in urban China

Based on data from a 2005 survey conducted in Shanghai, China, this research examines the role of social capital in income inequality between rural migrants and urbanites. We find strong income return on social capital, in particular on social capital from strong ties. We also observe a great disparity in social capital possession between rural migrants and urban local residents. Although social capital from strong ties seems to be more important for rural migrants than for urbanites, local ties and high-status ties do not seem to benefit rural migrants. Hence, migrants not only suffer severe social capital deficits but also capital return deficits. Given the strong income returns on social capital and the substantial differences in access to and return on social capital between migrants and urban residents, social capital is consequently found to explain a large part of the income inequality between the two groups. Overall, our findings reveal macro-structural effects on the role of social capital in labor market stratification. In China, the lack of formal labor market mechanisms continues to create both a strong need for and opportunities for economic actions to be organized around informal channels via social relations. Yet, the long-standing institutional exclusion of migrants caused by the household registration system has resulted in pervasive social exclusion and discrimination which have substantially limited rural migrants’ accumulation and mobilization of social capital. Under these conditions, social capital reinforces the economic inequality between migrants and urban residents in China. Such empirical evidence adds to our understanding of the role of social capital in the economic integration of migrants and in shaping intergroup inequality in general.     

Gender and the Public Sphere: Alternative Forms of Integration in Nineteenth-Century America

This paper intends to evaluate two competing models of multicultural integration in stratified societies: the "multiple publics" model of Nancy Fraser and the "fragmented public sphere" model of Jeffrey Alexander. Fraser and Alexander disagree on whether or not claims to a general "common good" or "common humanity" are democratically legitimate in light of systemic inequality. Fraser rejects the idea that cultural integration can be democratic in conditions of social inequality, while Alexander accepts it and tries to explain how it may be realized. In order to address this debate, I analyze the cultural foundations of the female-led, maternally themed social movements of nineteenth-century America. The language of these movements supports Alexander's position over Fraser's, though it also suggests that Alexander is mistaken in the specifics of his cultural theory of a general and democratic "common good." While Alexander's model of integration is structured uniquely by what he and Philip Smith have called "the discourse of civil society," the evidence suggests a distinctly alternative, equally democratic code at play in this case, which I have labeled a discourse of affection and compassion.     

Is the relationship between inequality and growth affected by physical and human capital accumulation?

Using the latest available data and semiparametric methods, we investigate how human and physical capital accumulation affects the relationship between income inequality and subsequent economic growth. We find that higher income inequality generally reduces economic growth over the next 5-year period. Within nations possessing little human capital, this inequality-growth penalty is exacerbated by higher levels of physical capital, thus implying that as the returns to human capital rise relative to physical capital, inequality becomes more harmful to growth. This inequality-growth pattern does not hold in well educated nations.     

The Case of Cubans: Racial Inequality in U.S. Homeownership and Home Values

Prior research finds that human capital may explain racial housing inequality, whereas others note the historical role that race played in creating unequal housing conditions. This study uses the case of Cubans in the United States to examine whether human capital explains Black–White housing inequalities, or if they are a result of nativity/cohort differences—a proxy for the federal policies that supported Cubans’ economic and social incorporation. Using pooled data from the American Community Survey, I examine how human capital characteristics and nativity/migration cohorts shape odds of homeownership and predicted home values among Cubans. Extended analyses using decomposition methods find that although human capital characteristics are important, they play a smaller role in explaining Black–White differences in homeownership and home values. Indicative of the changing structure of racial stratification in the United States, results reveal substantial inequality among the oldest of Cuban immigrants and U.S.‐born Cubans, despite a trend toward declining inequality among recent arrivals. Supported by the literature of systemic racism, the case of Cubans shows how human capital explanations do not sufficiently explain racial housing inequalities and how the future of racial stratification is one of inter‐ and intra‐ethnic group inequality.     

(Net)Working out: social capital in a private health club

In Bowling Alone Robert Putnam considers the possibility that the growth of private health clubs and the rising rates of membership to such clubs might represent a counter-trend to his thesis on the decline in social capital. In this paper I explore this idea using ethnographic data and social network analysis. I show both that and how networks form in health clubs and I discuss the ways in which these networks constitute social capital for their members. In addition, however, I explore the 'dark side' of this form of social capital. I argue that high integration amongst some members of a fitness class can generate a power differential between those members and other, less integrated members who experience this negatively. Furthermore, with an eye on Burt's (2005 ) important thesis on brokerage and closure, I argue that brokerage between relatively closed clusters of agents can lead to inter-group rivalry and conflict, which, in turn, is experienced negatively by those involved.     

Are Latin America's corporate elites transnationally interconnected? A network analysis of interlocking directorates

Conflicting perspectives appear when thinking about the emergence of a cohesive transnational corporate network in Latin America. On the one hand, regional political integration, foreign investment growth, increased cross‐border mergers and acquisitions, and cultural and linguistic homogeneity may have fostered transnational networks among Latin America's corporate elites. On the other hand, domestic‐based business groups, family control and trade orientation to the USA may have hindered the emergence of a cohesive transnational corporate network in Latin America. Based on a network analysis of interlocking directorates among the 300 largest corporations in Latin America, I ask whether the region's corporate elites interconnect at the transnational level and form a cohesive transnational corporate network. I found few transnational interlocks, a lack of cohesion in the transnational corporate network and no regional leaders. Corporate elites in Latin America are not transnationally interconnected and so a cohesive transnational corporate network has not emerged. I discuss implications and avenues of future research.     

Limits of Social Capital for Refugee Integration: The Case of Gay Iranian Male Refugees' Integration in Canada

Each year thousands of refugees, including racialized LGBT refugees, are resettled in Canada. Currently, economic independence is the foremost policy goal in integrating Canada's refugees. This policy often relies on social capital as a non-economic solution to integration. I draw on 35 multi-sequential interviews with 19 gay Iranian men to connect the empirical and theoretical debates around refugee integration and argue that over-reliance on refugees' deployment of social capital for integration has grave shortcomings for their senses of belonging. I suggest that examining racialized LGBT refugees' integration strategies best reveals communitarian social capital's flaws at the conjunction of sexuality, gender, race, and class. I draw on Bourdieu's writings on social capital to highlight internal group differences, social inequalities, and the vital convertibility between financial, social, and cultural capital in building transferrable resources for refugee integration. I conclude by urging policy-oriented studies of social capital.     

Coming to terms with inequality and exploitation in an African state: researching disability in Sierra Leone

In this article, I describe how during my anthropological research in post‐conflict Sierra Leone with a disabled community, I was confronted by experiences of inequality and exploitation. Many disabled people had previous disabling contact with other researchers, organisations and journalists. Others described difficulties surviving the disabling socio‐economic conditions and were not viewed as ‘development’ partners, despite the fact that their images and stories had played a big role in the rebuilding and ‘healing’ of the Sierra Leonean nation state. I ask whether we as researchers and an international community are still not colluding with structures and institutions that exploit disabled people in post‐conflict and post‐disaster countries.     

INEQUALITY AND GROWTH IN THE UNITED STATES: WHY PHYSICAL AND HUMAN CAPITAL MATTER

We investigate the relationship between economic growth and top income inequality under the influence of human and physical capital accumulation, using an annual panel of U.S. state‐level data. Our analysis is based upon the “unified” framework offered by Galor and Moav (2004) while the empirics account for cross‐section dependence, parameter heterogeneity, and endogeneity, in nonstationary series. We conclude that changes in inequality do not influence growth, neither in the short run nor in the long run in the United States as a whole in the 1929–2013 period. Our findings are robust to the inclusion of overall income inequality measures. These findings provide support for the theoretical prediction of the unified theory of inequality and growth, according to which the growth effect of inequality becomes insignificant in the latest stages of economic development that the United States experiences during our period of investigation. Therefore, future policies aiming at moderating the concentration at the upper end of income distribution are not likely to have adverse growth consequences in developed countries such as the United States. (JEL I21, O47, C23)     

Inequality and growth in advanced economies: an empirical investigation

This paper empirically investigates the effect of income and human capital inequality on economic growth in different regions of the world. In the estimation of a dynamic panel data model that controls for country-specific effects and takes into account the persistency of the inequality indicators, the results show a different effect of inequality on growth depending on the level of development of the region. Specifically, we find a negative effect of income and human capital inequality on economic growth, both in the sample as a whole and in the low and middle-income economies, an effect that vanishes or becomes positive in the higher-income countries.     

Gain versus pain from status and ambition: Effects on growth and inequality

To shed light on growth, distribution and the relationship between the two, we develop an endogenous growth model with heterogeneous individuals who care about social status. Individuals’ heterogeneity stems from two sources: their innate skills and their degree of ambition. While the willingness of individuals to accumulate wealth depends on whether they experience gain or pain from loss of status, we show that ambition of individuals plays an important role regarding growth and distribution: ambition can inhibit or foster accumulation of wealth, then in turn growth. In such a context, though we show that growth can be positively or negatively correlated with inequality, the case of a positive correlation between the two appears to be the most plausible.     

Social Capital in Korea: Relational Capital,Trust, and Transparency

This article starts by distinguishing two different types of social capital, that is, societal moral resource capital and relational capital. Social capital as a societal moral resource is best characterized in Putnam's works. Social capital as the relational mobilization of information and control is best conceptualized by Coleman. By contrasting these two aspects of social capital, and by contextualizing the peculiarity of social relations in East Asian countries, this article explores the characteristics of social capital in Korea. For that purpose, I focus on the working of relational capital, or inmaek, in the creation and reproduction of social inequality. Moreover, I calculate the macro-level transformation of Korean society in terms of the role of societal moral resources.     

The Unintended Significance of Race: Environmental Racial Inequality in Detroit

This article addresses shortcomings in the literature on environmental inequality by (a) setting forth and testing four models of environmental inequality and (b) explicitly linking environmental inequality research to spatial mismatch theory and to the debate on the declining significance of race. The explanatory models ask whether the distribution of blacks and whites around environmental hazards is the result of black/white income inequality, racist siting practices, or residential segregation. The models are tested using manufacturing facility and census data from the Detroit metropolitan area. It turns out that the distribution of blacks and whites around this region's polluting manufacturing facilities is largely the product of residential segregation which, paradoxically, has reduced black proximity to manufacturing facility pollution.     

Income inequality,cultural capital,and high school students' academic achievement in OECD countries: A moderated mediation analysis

This study examines how social context, in this case, income inequality, shapes the role of cultural capital in educational success. First, we revisit the associations between (objectified) cultural capital and academic achievement, and cultural capital's role in mediating the relationship between family SES and academic achievement. More importantly, we explore how national-level income inequality moderates these two relationships. By analyzing a multilevel dataset of 32 OECD countries, a combination of PISA 2018 data and several national indexes, we find that: (1) cultural capital not only has a positive association with students' academic achievement but also acts as a significant mediator of the relationship between family SES and academic achievement in OECD countries; (2) both cultural capital's association with academic achievement and it's mediating role are stronger in more equal countries than in unequal ones. The findings shed new light on understanding how cultural capital shapes intergenerational education inequality across countries with different levels of inequality.     

The empirical assessment of multidimensional welfare,inequality and poverty: Sample weighted multivariate generalizations of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov two sample tests for stochastic dominance

Sample weighted multidimensional extensions to existing stochastic dominance, inequality and polarization comparison techniques are introduced and employed to examine whether or not ignoring multidimensional and sample weighting aspects result in misleading inferences. The techniques are employed in the context of a sample of nations, in essence each country in the sample is represented by an agent characterized by the per capita GNP of that country, the GNP growth rate of that country and the average life expectancy in that country. In essence the inequality that is being examined is that between the representative agents in these countries, intra country inequality is not being measured. The results suggest that multidimensional techniques lead to substantially different conclusions from those drawn from the use of unidimensional measures and that sample weighting also has a profound effect on the empirical outcomes. An erratum to this article can be found at     

The roles of human capital and social capital in the economic integration of new arrivals from Mainland China to Hong Kong

Although it has been hypothesized in the literature that both human capital and social capital are important for the economic performance of new immigrants, few studies have examined these relationships empirically, especially in understudied populations such as Chinese populations. This study simultaneously examines the roles of human capital and social capital in the economic integration of new arrivals from Mainland China to Hong Kong, using a random sample of immigrants. In the early stage of immigration (less than 6 months after arrival), we find little support for the presumed positive effects of both human capital and social capital on employment status among new arrivals in Hong Kong. Follow-up studies are underway to investigate the dynamic relationship between social capital and economic integration in this group of new arrivals, and whether social capital, especially friendship networks, plays a more important role in the economic integration of new immigrants 1 or 2 years after arrival.     

The Evolution of a Contested Concept: A Meta‐Analysis of Social Capital Definitions and Trends (1988–2006)*

This paper offers a meta‐analysis that traces the contested meaning and use of social capital in sociological research over the last 18 years by focusing on journal article definitions. We identify six common definitions in use that closely correspond to the original—and in some cases, independent—formulations offered by Hanifan, Putnam, Coleman, Bourdieu, and Granovetter. Drawing from Kuhnian theory, we contend that these definitions illuminate deep divisions between those who understand social capital as a normative “cure‐all” ( Portes 1998 )—in the tradition of Hanifan, Putnam, and Coleman —and those who view it as a resource—in the tradition of Bourdieu and Granovetter—that may be used to create or maintain social inequality. The transition of social capital from preparadigm to paradigm status may potentially involve an integration of these approaches, but this will require greater consideration of power and inequality on the part of normative theorists, who are currently dominating the debate.     

Immigrants in Azerbaijan: Current Situation and Prospects of (Re)integration Policy

“Our identity is at once plural and partial.Sometimes we feel that we straddle two cultures;At other times, that we fall between two stools.” Salman Rushdie

The integration problems of immigrants in the post‐Soviet Azerbaijan have not been the focus of researchers' attention. The present article fills this gap. I classify immigrants into three groups: 1) natives of Azerbaijan (re‐emigrants) and their family members; 2) ethnics from Georgia; 3) labour immigrants from different countries, who arrive to Azerbaijan to look for a job or to open their own business. I examine the social resources and practices used by immigrants to support their integration, in the absence of state integration policy. I conclude that the main resource is each immigrant's personal social capital, based on networks. These networks are transnational in their nature. Immigrants build up and integrate in this kind of transnational network, as well as in the transnational spaces of the capital of Azerbaijan (Baku), where the vast majority of them reside after they move to the country.