The context of discrimination: workplace conditions, institutional environments, and sex and race discrimination charges

This article explores the organizational conditions under which discrimination charges occur. Drawing on structural and organizational theories of the workplace, the authors demonstrate how organizational conditions affect workers' and regulatory agents' understandings of unlawful discrimination. Using a national sample of work establishments, matched to discrimination-charge data obtained from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the authors examine how characteristics of the workplace and institutional environment affect variation in the incidence of workers' charges of sex and race discrimination and in the subset of discrimination claims that are verified by EEOC investigators. The findings indicate that workplace conditions, including size, composition, and minority management, affect workers' charges as well as verified claims; the latter are also affected by institutional factors, such as affirmative action requirements, subsidiary status, and industrial sector. These results suggest that internal workplace conditions affect both workers' and regulatory agents' interpretations of potentially discriminatory experiences, while institutional conditions matter only for regulatory agents' interpretations of those events.     

Investments in young children among low-income families

This article examines low-income parents’ monetary investments in their young children, asking how low-income families are able to afford spending on children. We investigate parental spending on child care and on goods in the home that may provide enrichment for young children. We find little evidence that households make spending trade-offs for either type of good. Instead, our results suggest that low-income households that can afford child care may be poor only temporarily and that they spend primarily when they are unable to avoid doing so because of family work patterns. For enrichment goods, parental education is a stronger predictor of spending.     

Household Income,Women's Earnings,and Spending on Household Services, 1980–2010

The authors investigated changes in household outsourcing, the practice of spending on services that replace household labor, from 1980 to 2010. During this time, women's labor force participation, increased and economic, household bargaining, and time availability theories predict increased spending during this period. To test these predictions, the authors used data on spending on housekeeping, day care, babysitting and nannies, gardening and lawn services, eating out and pre‐prepared foods from the 1980–2010 Consumer Expenditure Surveys using 327,903 household‐quarters from the interview survey and 86,877 household‐weeks from the diary survey. The results indicate that changes in income predicted increases in housekeeping, child care, and gardening services. Changes in household characteristics predicted little change in food outsourcing, although food outsourcing did increase. Changes in women's earnings predicted little change in most outsourcing. The authors conclude the article with a discussion of the changing context for outsourcing.     

Investing in Children: Changes in Parental Spending on Children, 1972–2007

Parental spending on children is often presumed to be one of the main ways that parents invest in children and a main reason why children from wealthier households are advantaged. Yet, although research has tracked changes in the other main form of parental investment—namely, time—there is little research on spending. We use data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey to examine how spending changed from the early 1970s to the late 2000s, focusing particularly on inequality in parental investment in children. Parental spending increased, as did inequality of investment. We also investigate shifts in the composition of spending and linkages to children’s characteristics. Investment in male and female children changed substantially: households with only female children spent significantly less than parents in households with only male children in the early 1970s; but by the 1990s, spending had equalized; and by the late 2000s, girls appeared to enjoy an advantage. Finally, the shape of parental investment over the course of children’s lives changed. Prior to the 1990s, parents spent most on children in their teen years. After the 1990s, however, spending was greatest when children were under the age of 6 and in their mid-20s.