Racial Differences in Perceptions of Affluence

Abstract

This study examines perceptions held by inner-city blacks and whites of the extent of affluence in America. Blacks generally tend to believe that affluence is more widespread than do whites, although substantial variation in racial differences occurs across sex and age categories. Controls for socio-economic characteristics have little effect on racial differences in perceptions of affluence. The analysis suggests that race has an effect on perceptions of affluence that is independent of the effects of social class.     

Intergenerational continuity in parenting: a review and theoretical integration

Abstract

Objective: This review evaluates literature on how parenting behaviors are passed from one generation to the next in families by providing a new definitional framework to organize existing work, utilizing this framework to review literature on intergenerational continuity in parenting behaviors, and proposing a new developmental framework for understanding the etiology of intergenerational continuity in parenting behaviors.

Design: The present review examines 31 studies of intergenerational continuity in parenting, summarizes the findings offered by these studies, and integrates this existing literature in a theoretical framework for considering the etiology of intergenerational continuity in parenting behaviors.

Results: Results indicate that parental warmth, hostility, and behavioral control each demonstrate intergenerational continuity, and that internalizing and externalizing behavior serve as potential mediators of intergenerational continuity across all three types of parenting behaviors.

Conclusions: Parenting behaviors falling in the warmth, hostility, and behavioral control domains each demonstrate modest continuity across generations. Internalizing and externalizing behaviors developed by children in response to parenting in their family of origin may persist and cause similar patterns of parenting when these children grow up and start their own families. Partner psychopathology and parenting styles may moderate these externalizing and internalizing pathways to intergenerational continuity in parenting.     

Small-dollar children's saving accounts and children's college outcomes by race

This is paper three of four in the Small-Dollar Children Accounts series that studies the relationship between children's small dollar savings accounts and college enrollment and graduation. The series uses different subsamples to examine three important research questions: (a) Are children with savings of their own more likely to attend or graduate from college? (b) Does dosage (no account, only basic savings, savings designated for school of less than $1, $1 to $499, or $500 or more) matter? And (c) is designating for school more predictive of college enrollment or graduation than having basic undesignated savings alone? Using propensity score weighted data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its supplements we created multi-treatment dosages of savings accounts and amounts to answer these questions separately for black (n = 404) and white (n = 453) children. White children's savings are not significantly related to their college outcomes. Differently, compared to black children without savings accounts, black children are three times more likely to enroll in college when they have school savings of less than $1 and six times more likely when they have school savings of $1 to $499. Further, black children with school savings of $1 to $499 are four times more likely to graduate from college and black children with school savings of $500 or more are three-and-a-half times more likely to graduate from college, compared to those with no savings account. We suggest Child Development Accounts (CDAs) may be a promising tool for helping black children get to and through college.     

Hyperrationality: Historical antecedents and contemporary outcomes within Japanese manufacturing

After World War II, the Japanese began to rebuild industrially by importing American formally rational technologies and fusing them with indigenous ones. Most importantly, they integrated formal rationality with practical, theoretical, and substantive rationalities to produce a “hyperrational” system. The synergy between these four types of rationality produced a level of rationality exceeding that found in formally rational American industry. It is argued that the growth in Japanese manufacturing can be traced to hyperrationality. In this paper, the existence of hyper‐rationality, its implications for the Japanese manufacturing sector, and possible avenues for future sociological research are demonstrated.     

Professionals’ attitudes toward advertising: A study of accountants,dentists and lawyers

The present study addresses the nature and types of attitudes and behavioral dispositions of accountants, dentists and lawyers toward the use of advertising and delineates professional and work related factors that impact on these attitudes and behavioral dispositions toward advertising. Findings indicate that the concept of professionalism, reduced to five major subscales, fails in the majority of instances to explain a significant amount of variance in practitioners’ feelings toward advertising. Only the subscale of autonomy consistently relates to practitioners’ attitudes and behavioral dispositions toward advertising, and then only for accountants.