This study examines the extent to which family financial transfers occur among Boston residents o... more This study examines the extent to which family financial transfers occur among Boston residents of color. New data collected for the Boston Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), as part of the National Asset Scorecard for Communities of Color (NASCC) survey, for the first time provide detailed information on financial assets that allow analysis to be broken down beyond the traditional black-and-white divide at the metropolitan-area level. Targeting U.S.-born blacks, Caribbean blacks, Cape Verdeans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans, findings show that households of color consistently receive fewer financial transfers than whites, while at the same time providing more financial assistance to their families and relatives. Particularly striking are differences in parental payments toward higher education expenses and financial support for the down payment of a home. Immigrant status further explains differences between white and nonwhite households as well as between households of color. Th...
BackgroundIn the United States, Black Americans are suffering from significantly disproportionate... more BackgroundIn the United States, Black Americans are suffering from significantly disproportionate incidence and mortality rates of COVID-19. The potential for racial-justice interventions, including reparations payments, to ameliorate these disparities has not been adequately explored.MethodsWe compared the COVID-19 time-varying Rt curves of relatively disparate polities in terms of social equity (South Korea vs. Louisiana). Next, we considered a range of reproductive ratios to back-calculate the transmission rates βi→j for 4 cells of the simplified next-generation matrix (from which R0 is calculated for structured models) for the outbreak in Louisiana. Lastly, we modeled the effect that monetary payments as reparations for Black American descendants of persons enslaved in the U.S. would have had on pre-intervention βi→j.ResultsOnce their respective epidemics begin to propagate, Louisiana displays Rt values with an absolute difference of 1.3 to 2.5 compared to South Korea. It also t...
ing back more than a decade. As Mora, Dávila, and Rodríguez (2017) note, Puerto Rico already was ... more ing back more than a decade. As Mora, Dávila, and Rodríguez (2017) note, Puerto Rico already was confronting a prolonged humanitarian emergency before María because of its severe economic crisis-La Crísis Boricua-that had been ongoing since 2006.3 At a fundamental level, the extended Crísis Boricua cannot be viewed separately from the racialized colonial policies that dispossessed the Puerto Rican people of their own resources and economic potential and, simultaneously, severely limited the island's sovereignty. Since the US invasion of the island in 1898, Puerto Rico's role as a site of extraction has escalated with the primary purpose of benefiting the (mainland) United States while increasing the island's dependence on the larger power (Lloréns, Santiago, Garcia-Quijano, & de Onis, 2018).4 The more recent wave of purportedly debt-driven austerity has spurred a new wave of net out-migration, the largest yet in Puerto Rico's history, as well as high unemployment, declining labor-force participation, and the worsening of a host of other socioeconomic conditions (Mora et al., 2017; Mélendez & Hinojosa, 2017). Given this backdrop, it is clear that any long-term solution must involve a change in political status for the island and a social-justice-based restitution of appropriated wealth. In this working blueprint, we center on redress, calling on the fiscal/ethical responsibility of the United States to engage in debt cancellation, thereby removing the pretended rationale for austerity. We also call, as part of a larger public investment plan, for implementation of a locally administered, island-wide, permanent Puerto Rican Job Guarantee (PRJG), with specific intent to build, staff, and maintain a sustainable renewable-energy-based infrastructure. A living-wage-based PRJG would not only help
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 2019
Much of the pivotal debate concerning the validity of affirmative action is situated in a legal c... more Much of the pivotal debate concerning the validity of affirmative action is situated in a legal context of defending or challenging claims that there may be broad societal gains from increased diversity. Race-conscious affirmative action policies originally advanced legal sanctions to promote racial equity in the United States. Today, increasingly detached from its historical context, defense or rejection of affirmative action is otherwise upheld to achieve diversity. A “diversity” rationale for affirmative action calls for increasing tolerance of the “other,” reducing negative stereotypes, and moderating prejudice as goals—all objectives that deviate from the former aim of race-targeted inclusion intended to resolve racial discrimination in employment and college admissions. Diversity policy provides a tapered defense for affirmative action, one detached from principles of justice and equity. The current article suggests that, despite the fact that the ostensible benefits of “racia...
Researchers from a range of disciplines have conducted studies to identify why one in five person... more Researchers from a range of disciplines have conducted studies to identify why one in five persons in the United States fails to complete high school. Our research contributes to this literature by exploring the link between violence victimization as a youth on subsequently dropping out of high school and years of schooling completed. This pathway has largely been neglected in prior studies, although about a third of all women and men report being the victim of violence prior to the age of 16. Using data drawn from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R) and the National Survey of American Life (NSAL), our analysis reveals that females and males who are the victims violence are more likely to drop out of high school relative to their peers who report that they never were the victims of violence. In addition, these negative effects appear to be driven by the effect of home violence for both genders while men also experience negative effects from community violence.
How to cite TSpace items Always cite the published version, so the author(s) will receive recogni... more How to cite TSpace items Always cite the published version, so the author(s) will receive recognition through services that track citation counts, e.g. Scopus. If you need to cite the page number of the author manuscript from TSpace because you cannot access the published version, then cite the TSpace version in addition to the published version using the permanent URI (handle) found on the record page. This article was made openly accessible by U of T Faculty. Please tell us how this access benefits you. Your story matters.
This study uses a North Carolina administrative data set to analyze racial segregation and studen... more This study uses a North Carolina administrative data set to analyze racial segregation and student achievement in Wake County during race-based and income-based school assignment plans. We find a modest increase in the level of racial segregation in Wake schools during the income-based plan, but compared with other large districts in the state, Wake County remained relatively desegregated. We also find a small increase in reading and math test scores and a narrowing of the Black-White test score gap. Our analysis indicates that the improvement in math scores may be partially due to school composition changes attributable to the income-based assignment plan.
Reconnecting to Work: Policies to Mitigate Long-Term Unemployment and Its Consequences, 2012
Reconnecting to work : policies to mitigate long-term unemployment and its consequences / Lauren ... more Reconnecting to work : policies to mitigate long-term unemployment and its consequences / Lauren D. Appelbaum, editor. p. cm. Papers presented at a conference held on Apr. 1-2, 2011. Includes bibliographical references and index.
This paper provides a summary of information in the UTIP data set on the evolution of industrial ... more This paper provides a summary of information in the UTIP data set on the evolution of industrial earnings inequality in the global economy. At present the data set covers 66 countries, with annual observations going back to 1972 in most cases and to 1963 in many. Our measure of changing inequality, based on the group-wise decomposition of the Theil statistic across industrial categories, appears to be a sensitive barometer of political and economic conditions in many countries, and the percentage change in this index appears to be meaningfully comparable across countries. We also measure and detect regional patterns of similarity in the movement of inequality through time. The paper may be read in conjunction with many illustrations available for downloading at the UTIP web-site: http://utip.gov.utexas.edu.
This wasn't supposed to be a book. Several years ago, one of us (Kinder) was about to finish a bo... more This wasn't supposed to be a book. Several years ago, one of us (Kinder) was about to finish a book. That's what he kept telling himself and others: Almost finished. Nearly done. The subject of that book was the role of prejudice in contemporary American politics. It was organized around Gunnar Myrdal's famous prediction, spelled out in his masterwork of social science, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). According to Myrdal, white Americans were caught in a dilemma, suspended between their commitment to democratic principles, on the one side, and their belief in the superiority of the white race, on the other. Myrdal was certain that democratic principles would prevail. Prejudice and discrimination were about to disappear. Kinder referred to the book he was about to finish, with apologies to Spalding Gray, as the "Monster in a Box." As Gray did with his incomplete novel, Kinder carried his book with him wherever he went, adding what seemed to him to be indispensable insights, scratching vital notes in the margins, imagining additional crucial analyses, never quite coming to the end. The box was large-but the book (Kinder kept saying) was nearly done. Then, out of the blue appeared Barack Hussein Obama. Kinder first learned of him from reading his name on a T-shirt worn by his son Jacob, then age twelve. At the time, Obama was an Illinois state senator; Jacob thought Obama should be president. Kinder began to read about him; soon enough, we all did. Obama posed a problem for the book in the box, which argued that Myrdal was wrong. Obama's remarkable rise to prominence and his historic victory in 2008 did not, by itself, prove Myrdal right. But Kinder clearly had some explaining to do. With this in mind, we began in the winter of 2009 to collaborate on what we assumed would be a chapter for the book in the box. We started out by comparing the role of race in the 2008 presidential election to the role played by religion in the Kennedy-Nixon contest of 1960. The resulting paper was long and illuminating (to us at least), but it only told part of the story we needed to tell if we were to get at the real meaning of 2008 for racial politics in America. At some point, we came to the
This article proposes the formation of a National Investment Employment Corps to provide a job gu... more This article proposes the formation of a National Investment Employment Corps to provide a job guarantee for all citizens and to perform the work necessary to maintain and expand the nation's physical and human infrastructure. The permanent establishment of the National Investment Employment Corps coupled with the federal job guarantee not only would address the employment needs created by the current economic crisis but would yield enduring benefits to national well being. Moreover, it would provide a direct mechanism for producing continuous full employment in the US economy.
The literature on the black middle class has focused predominantly on married-couple families wit... more The literature on the black middle class has focused predominantly on married-couple families with children, reflecting a conception of the black middle class as principally composed of this family type. If that conception is correct, then declining rates of marriage and childrearing would imply a decline in the presence and vitality of the black middle class. Indeed, this is the implication that researchers typically draw from the decline in black marriage rates. However, an alternative view suggests that the decline in marriage and childrearing is producing a shift in the types of households comprising the black middle class. This paper assesses-and affirms-that alternative view. This research shows that, indeed, never-married singles who live alone (Love Jones Cohort) constitute a rapidly growing segment of the black middle class, a development which requires rethinking how the black middle class is conceptualized and studied. Over the past three decades in the United States, the age of marriage has risen, divorce rates have remained relatively stable, cohabitation has soared, non-marital childbearing has become more prevalent, marrying and having children have become less common, and more women, especially mothers, are in the labor force (Casper and Bianchi 2002). With the exception of the trend toward not having children, these trends have been dramatically evident among blacks (Tucker and Mitchell-Kernan 1995). The retreat from marriage, in particular, has been more pronounced for blacks than for any other racial group (Raley 2000) The authors thank John-Charles Duffy, Barbara Entwisle, Bill Wentworth, the anonymous reviewers and conference and seminar participants for their extremely helpful comments.
Paul Samuelson recalls in correspondence dated I6 November I990 that he had "worked out the simpl... more Paul Samuelson recalls in correspondence dated I6 November I990 that he had "worked out the simple teaching tools [for Alvin Hansen], around 1938." Modestly he says, "But, like Hicks, I was only putting the already obvious in terms of graphs and math." What Samuelson calls Hicks-Hansen IS-LM "carried the day at the intermediate level" in his estimation because "it gave a neat 2-dimensional graphing." But he adds, "The reason the Samuelson-Keynesian saving-investment-cross or C + 1-45 diagram carried the day at the elementary level was its easy I-variable teachability. Hicks-Hansen never broke in at the elementary textbook level: in many revisions I toyed with a draft of it but always settled for a I-variable Y [national income] version along with loose discussion of the influence on I [investment] of the interest rate." David Colander (I99 I , 98, 10 I n. 9, 134-35) also has observed that the popularity of IS-LM has been due to its "teachability" at the intermediate and graduate levels. 4. Again in Samuelson's letter (16 November 1990), he observes that although he influenced Alvin Hansen "a lot" that Hansen only "came to [2-variable] IS-LM after I hung my hat at MIT." There was no major reason to include the rate of interest as a key actor in t h: play, according to Samuelson. He writes, "You must realize that in the prewar , say 1936-1939, U.S. banks had excess-reserves and the short-run i [interest rate] was often 3/8 of 3/8 of 3/8 of I%! No need then for i to be added to the I-variable Y system." Provocatively Samuelson goes on to note, "Joan Robinson, Lerner, Kalecki. .. converted the classical infidels to the new Keynes-Kuhnian paradigm by the I-variable model." 5. Fusfeld also reports that Lorie Tarshis recalls utilizing the Z-D type of apparatus in his Dates, Places and Context of Initial PresentationFinal Publication Nature and Types of Sectors Variables and Markets b Hansen book-A Guide to Keynes (1953) pedogogical purposes Harrod/Hicks equations c Modigliani R Eco Stat 1963 one-sector, real income includes lab. mkt. prod. Smith SEJ Oct. 1956 "pedagogical purposes" real-money dichotomy func. implicit in General Theory diagram, p.
Are predictions that Hispanics will make up 25 per cent of the US population in 2050 reliable? Th... more Are predictions that Hispanics will make up 25 per cent of the US population in 2050 reliable? The authors of this paper argue that these and other predictions are problematic insofar as they do not account for the volatile nature of Latino racial and ethnic identifications. In this light, the authors propose a theoretical framework that can be used to predict Latinos' and Latinas' racial choices. This framework is tested using two distinct datasets Á the 1989 Latino National Political Survey and the 2002 National Survey of Latinos. The results from the analyses of both of these surveys lend credence to the authors' claims that Latinas' and Latinos' skin colour and experiences of discrimination affect whether people from Latin America and their descendants who live in the US will choose to identify racially as black, white or Latina/o.
This is the latest in our series of Critical Survey articles. The aim of the series is to report ... more This is the latest in our series of Critical Survey articles. The aim of the series is to report on recent developments, to provide an assessment of alternative approaches and to suggest lines of further inquiry. The intention is that the articles should be accessible not only to other academic researchers but also to students and others more practically involved in the economy. Recent Survey articles include
For two decades the acting white hypothesis—the premise that black students are driven toward low... more For two decades the acting white hypothesis—the premise that black students are driven toward low school performance because of racialized peer pressure—has served as an explanation for the black-white achievement gap. Fordham and Ogbu proposed that black youths sabotage their own school careers by taking an oppositional stance toward academic achievement. Using interviews and existing data from eight North Carolina secondary public schools, this article shows that black adolescents are generally achievement oriented and that racialized peer pressure against high academic achievement is not prevalent in all schools. The analysis also shows important similarities in the experiences of black and white high-achieving students, indicating that dilemmas of high achievement are generalizable beyond a specific group. Typically, highachieving students, regardless of race, are to some degree stigmatized as “nerds” or “geeks.” The data suggest that school structures, rather than culture, may ...
Equity and social well-being considerations make Black–White health disparities an area of import... more Equity and social well-being considerations make Black–White health disparities an area of important concern. Although previous research suggests that discrimination- and poverty-related stressors play a role in African American health outcomes, the mechanisms are unclear. Allostatic load is a concept that can be employed to demonstrate how environmental stressors, including psychosocial ones, may lead to a cumulative physiological toll on the body. We discuss both the usefulness of this framework for understanding how discrimination can lead to worse health among African Americans, and the challenges for conceptualizing biological risk with existing data and methods. We also contrast allostatic load with theories of historical trauma such as posttraumatic slavery syndrome. Finally, we offer our suggestions for future interdisciplinary research on health disparities.
In their stormy response to Nancy MacLean’s book Democracy in Chains, some academics on the liber... more In their stormy response to Nancy MacLean’s book Democracy in Chains, some academics on the libertarian right have conducted a concerted defense of Nobel Laureate James Buchanan’s credentials as an anti-racist, or at least a non-racist. An odd component of their argument is a claim of innocence by association: the peripatetic South African economist and Mont Pelerin Society founding member William Harold Hutt was against apartheid; Buchanan was a friend and supporter of Hutt; therefore, Buchanan could not have been abetting segregationists with his support for public funding of segregationist private schools. At the core of this chain of argument is the inference that Hutt’s opposition to apartheid proves that Hutt himself was committed to racial equality. However, just as there were white supremacists who opposed slavery in the United States, we demonstrate Hutt was a white supremacist who opposed apartheid in South Africa. We document how Hutt embraced notions of black inferiority...
This study examines the extent to which family financial transfers occur among Boston residents o... more This study examines the extent to which family financial transfers occur among Boston residents of color. New data collected for the Boston Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), as part of the National Asset Scorecard for Communities of Color (NASCC) survey, for the first time provide detailed information on financial assets that allow analysis to be broken down beyond the traditional black-and-white divide at the metropolitan-area level. Targeting U.S.-born blacks, Caribbean blacks, Cape Verdeans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans, findings show that households of color consistently receive fewer financial transfers than whites, while at the same time providing more financial assistance to their families and relatives. Particularly striking are differences in parental payments toward higher education expenses and financial support for the down payment of a home. Immigrant status further explains differences between white and nonwhite households as well as between households of color. Th...
BackgroundIn the United States, Black Americans are suffering from significantly disproportionate... more BackgroundIn the United States, Black Americans are suffering from significantly disproportionate incidence and mortality rates of COVID-19. The potential for racial-justice interventions, including reparations payments, to ameliorate these disparities has not been adequately explored.MethodsWe compared the COVID-19 time-varying Rt curves of relatively disparate polities in terms of social equity (South Korea vs. Louisiana). Next, we considered a range of reproductive ratios to back-calculate the transmission rates βi→j for 4 cells of the simplified next-generation matrix (from which R0 is calculated for structured models) for the outbreak in Louisiana. Lastly, we modeled the effect that monetary payments as reparations for Black American descendants of persons enslaved in the U.S. would have had on pre-intervention βi→j.ResultsOnce their respective epidemics begin to propagate, Louisiana displays Rt values with an absolute difference of 1.3 to 2.5 compared to South Korea. It also t...
ing back more than a decade. As Mora, Dávila, and Rodríguez (2017) note, Puerto Rico already was ... more ing back more than a decade. As Mora, Dávila, and Rodríguez (2017) note, Puerto Rico already was confronting a prolonged humanitarian emergency before María because of its severe economic crisis-La Crísis Boricua-that had been ongoing since 2006.3 At a fundamental level, the extended Crísis Boricua cannot be viewed separately from the racialized colonial policies that dispossessed the Puerto Rican people of their own resources and economic potential and, simultaneously, severely limited the island's sovereignty. Since the US invasion of the island in 1898, Puerto Rico's role as a site of extraction has escalated with the primary purpose of benefiting the (mainland) United States while increasing the island's dependence on the larger power (Lloréns, Santiago, Garcia-Quijano, & de Onis, 2018).4 The more recent wave of purportedly debt-driven austerity has spurred a new wave of net out-migration, the largest yet in Puerto Rico's history, as well as high unemployment, declining labor-force participation, and the worsening of a host of other socioeconomic conditions (Mora et al., 2017; Mélendez & Hinojosa, 2017). Given this backdrop, it is clear that any long-term solution must involve a change in political status for the island and a social-justice-based restitution of appropriated wealth. In this working blueprint, we center on redress, calling on the fiscal/ethical responsibility of the United States to engage in debt cancellation, thereby removing the pretended rationale for austerity. We also call, as part of a larger public investment plan, for implementation of a locally administered, island-wide, permanent Puerto Rican Job Guarantee (PRJG), with specific intent to build, staff, and maintain a sustainable renewable-energy-based infrastructure. A living-wage-based PRJG would not only help
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 2019
Much of the pivotal debate concerning the validity of affirmative action is situated in a legal c... more Much of the pivotal debate concerning the validity of affirmative action is situated in a legal context of defending or challenging claims that there may be broad societal gains from increased diversity. Race-conscious affirmative action policies originally advanced legal sanctions to promote racial equity in the United States. Today, increasingly detached from its historical context, defense or rejection of affirmative action is otherwise upheld to achieve diversity. A “diversity” rationale for affirmative action calls for increasing tolerance of the “other,” reducing negative stereotypes, and moderating prejudice as goals—all objectives that deviate from the former aim of race-targeted inclusion intended to resolve racial discrimination in employment and college admissions. Diversity policy provides a tapered defense for affirmative action, one detached from principles of justice and equity. The current article suggests that, despite the fact that the ostensible benefits of “racia...
Researchers from a range of disciplines have conducted studies to identify why one in five person... more Researchers from a range of disciplines have conducted studies to identify why one in five persons in the United States fails to complete high school. Our research contributes to this literature by exploring the link between violence victimization as a youth on subsequently dropping out of high school and years of schooling completed. This pathway has largely been neglected in prior studies, although about a third of all women and men report being the victim of violence prior to the age of 16. Using data drawn from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R) and the National Survey of American Life (NSAL), our analysis reveals that females and males who are the victims violence are more likely to drop out of high school relative to their peers who report that they never were the victims of violence. In addition, these negative effects appear to be driven by the effect of home violence for both genders while men also experience negative effects from community violence.
How to cite TSpace items Always cite the published version, so the author(s) will receive recogni... more How to cite TSpace items Always cite the published version, so the author(s) will receive recognition through services that track citation counts, e.g. Scopus. If you need to cite the page number of the author manuscript from TSpace because you cannot access the published version, then cite the TSpace version in addition to the published version using the permanent URI (handle) found on the record page. This article was made openly accessible by U of T Faculty. Please tell us how this access benefits you. Your story matters.
This study uses a North Carolina administrative data set to analyze racial segregation and studen... more This study uses a North Carolina administrative data set to analyze racial segregation and student achievement in Wake County during race-based and income-based school assignment plans. We find a modest increase in the level of racial segregation in Wake schools during the income-based plan, but compared with other large districts in the state, Wake County remained relatively desegregated. We also find a small increase in reading and math test scores and a narrowing of the Black-White test score gap. Our analysis indicates that the improvement in math scores may be partially due to school composition changes attributable to the income-based assignment plan.
Reconnecting to Work: Policies to Mitigate Long-Term Unemployment and Its Consequences, 2012
Reconnecting to work : policies to mitigate long-term unemployment and its consequences / Lauren ... more Reconnecting to work : policies to mitigate long-term unemployment and its consequences / Lauren D. Appelbaum, editor. p. cm. Papers presented at a conference held on Apr. 1-2, 2011. Includes bibliographical references and index.
This paper provides a summary of information in the UTIP data set on the evolution of industrial ... more This paper provides a summary of information in the UTIP data set on the evolution of industrial earnings inequality in the global economy. At present the data set covers 66 countries, with annual observations going back to 1972 in most cases and to 1963 in many. Our measure of changing inequality, based on the group-wise decomposition of the Theil statistic across industrial categories, appears to be a sensitive barometer of political and economic conditions in many countries, and the percentage change in this index appears to be meaningfully comparable across countries. We also measure and detect regional patterns of similarity in the movement of inequality through time. The paper may be read in conjunction with many illustrations available for downloading at the UTIP web-site: http://utip.gov.utexas.edu.
This wasn't supposed to be a book. Several years ago, one of us (Kinder) was about to finish a bo... more This wasn't supposed to be a book. Several years ago, one of us (Kinder) was about to finish a book. That's what he kept telling himself and others: Almost finished. Nearly done. The subject of that book was the role of prejudice in contemporary American politics. It was organized around Gunnar Myrdal's famous prediction, spelled out in his masterwork of social science, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). According to Myrdal, white Americans were caught in a dilemma, suspended between their commitment to democratic principles, on the one side, and their belief in the superiority of the white race, on the other. Myrdal was certain that democratic principles would prevail. Prejudice and discrimination were about to disappear. Kinder referred to the book he was about to finish, with apologies to Spalding Gray, as the "Monster in a Box." As Gray did with his incomplete novel, Kinder carried his book with him wherever he went, adding what seemed to him to be indispensable insights, scratching vital notes in the margins, imagining additional crucial analyses, never quite coming to the end. The box was large-but the book (Kinder kept saying) was nearly done. Then, out of the blue appeared Barack Hussein Obama. Kinder first learned of him from reading his name on a T-shirt worn by his son Jacob, then age twelve. At the time, Obama was an Illinois state senator; Jacob thought Obama should be president. Kinder began to read about him; soon enough, we all did. Obama posed a problem for the book in the box, which argued that Myrdal was wrong. Obama's remarkable rise to prominence and his historic victory in 2008 did not, by itself, prove Myrdal right. But Kinder clearly had some explaining to do. With this in mind, we began in the winter of 2009 to collaborate on what we assumed would be a chapter for the book in the box. We started out by comparing the role of race in the 2008 presidential election to the role played by religion in the Kennedy-Nixon contest of 1960. The resulting paper was long and illuminating (to us at least), but it only told part of the story we needed to tell if we were to get at the real meaning of 2008 for racial politics in America. At some point, we came to the
This article proposes the formation of a National Investment Employment Corps to provide a job gu... more This article proposes the formation of a National Investment Employment Corps to provide a job guarantee for all citizens and to perform the work necessary to maintain and expand the nation's physical and human infrastructure. The permanent establishment of the National Investment Employment Corps coupled with the federal job guarantee not only would address the employment needs created by the current economic crisis but would yield enduring benefits to national well being. Moreover, it would provide a direct mechanism for producing continuous full employment in the US economy.
The literature on the black middle class has focused predominantly on married-couple families wit... more The literature on the black middle class has focused predominantly on married-couple families with children, reflecting a conception of the black middle class as principally composed of this family type. If that conception is correct, then declining rates of marriage and childrearing would imply a decline in the presence and vitality of the black middle class. Indeed, this is the implication that researchers typically draw from the decline in black marriage rates. However, an alternative view suggests that the decline in marriage and childrearing is producing a shift in the types of households comprising the black middle class. This paper assesses-and affirms-that alternative view. This research shows that, indeed, never-married singles who live alone (Love Jones Cohort) constitute a rapidly growing segment of the black middle class, a development which requires rethinking how the black middle class is conceptualized and studied. Over the past three decades in the United States, the age of marriage has risen, divorce rates have remained relatively stable, cohabitation has soared, non-marital childbearing has become more prevalent, marrying and having children have become less common, and more women, especially mothers, are in the labor force (Casper and Bianchi 2002). With the exception of the trend toward not having children, these trends have been dramatically evident among blacks (Tucker and Mitchell-Kernan 1995). The retreat from marriage, in particular, has been more pronounced for blacks than for any other racial group (Raley 2000) The authors thank John-Charles Duffy, Barbara Entwisle, Bill Wentworth, the anonymous reviewers and conference and seminar participants for their extremely helpful comments.
Paul Samuelson recalls in correspondence dated I6 November I990 that he had "worked out the simpl... more Paul Samuelson recalls in correspondence dated I6 November I990 that he had "worked out the simple teaching tools [for Alvin Hansen], around 1938." Modestly he says, "But, like Hicks, I was only putting the already obvious in terms of graphs and math." What Samuelson calls Hicks-Hansen IS-LM "carried the day at the intermediate level" in his estimation because "it gave a neat 2-dimensional graphing." But he adds, "The reason the Samuelson-Keynesian saving-investment-cross or C + 1-45 diagram carried the day at the elementary level was its easy I-variable teachability. Hicks-Hansen never broke in at the elementary textbook level: in many revisions I toyed with a draft of it but always settled for a I-variable Y [national income] version along with loose discussion of the influence on I [investment] of the interest rate." David Colander (I99 I , 98, 10 I n. 9, 134-35) also has observed that the popularity of IS-LM has been due to its "teachability" at the intermediate and graduate levels. 4. Again in Samuelson's letter (16 November 1990), he observes that although he influenced Alvin Hansen "a lot" that Hansen only "came to [2-variable] IS-LM after I hung my hat at MIT." There was no major reason to include the rate of interest as a key actor in t h: play, according to Samuelson. He writes, "You must realize that in the prewar , say 1936-1939, U.S. banks had excess-reserves and the short-run i [interest rate] was often 3/8 of 3/8 of 3/8 of I%! No need then for i to be added to the I-variable Y system." Provocatively Samuelson goes on to note, "Joan Robinson, Lerner, Kalecki. .. converted the classical infidels to the new Keynes-Kuhnian paradigm by the I-variable model." 5. Fusfeld also reports that Lorie Tarshis recalls utilizing the Z-D type of apparatus in his Dates, Places and Context of Initial PresentationFinal Publication Nature and Types of Sectors Variables and Markets b Hansen book-A Guide to Keynes (1953) pedogogical purposes Harrod/Hicks equations c Modigliani R Eco Stat 1963 one-sector, real income includes lab. mkt. prod. Smith SEJ Oct. 1956 "pedagogical purposes" real-money dichotomy func. implicit in General Theory diagram, p.
Are predictions that Hispanics will make up 25 per cent of the US population in 2050 reliable? Th... more Are predictions that Hispanics will make up 25 per cent of the US population in 2050 reliable? The authors of this paper argue that these and other predictions are problematic insofar as they do not account for the volatile nature of Latino racial and ethnic identifications. In this light, the authors propose a theoretical framework that can be used to predict Latinos' and Latinas' racial choices. This framework is tested using two distinct datasets Á the 1989 Latino National Political Survey and the 2002 National Survey of Latinos. The results from the analyses of both of these surveys lend credence to the authors' claims that Latinas' and Latinos' skin colour and experiences of discrimination affect whether people from Latin America and their descendants who live in the US will choose to identify racially as black, white or Latina/o.
This is the latest in our series of Critical Survey articles. The aim of the series is to report ... more This is the latest in our series of Critical Survey articles. The aim of the series is to report on recent developments, to provide an assessment of alternative approaches and to suggest lines of further inquiry. The intention is that the articles should be accessible not only to other academic researchers but also to students and others more practically involved in the economy. Recent Survey articles include
For two decades the acting white hypothesis—the premise that black students are driven toward low... more For two decades the acting white hypothesis—the premise that black students are driven toward low school performance because of racialized peer pressure—has served as an explanation for the black-white achievement gap. Fordham and Ogbu proposed that black youths sabotage their own school careers by taking an oppositional stance toward academic achievement. Using interviews and existing data from eight North Carolina secondary public schools, this article shows that black adolescents are generally achievement oriented and that racialized peer pressure against high academic achievement is not prevalent in all schools. The analysis also shows important similarities in the experiences of black and white high-achieving students, indicating that dilemmas of high achievement are generalizable beyond a specific group. Typically, highachieving students, regardless of race, are to some degree stigmatized as “nerds” or “geeks.” The data suggest that school structures, rather than culture, may ...
Equity and social well-being considerations make Black–White health disparities an area of import... more Equity and social well-being considerations make Black–White health disparities an area of important concern. Although previous research suggests that discrimination- and poverty-related stressors play a role in African American health outcomes, the mechanisms are unclear. Allostatic load is a concept that can be employed to demonstrate how environmental stressors, including psychosocial ones, may lead to a cumulative physiological toll on the body. We discuss both the usefulness of this framework for understanding how discrimination can lead to worse health among African Americans, and the challenges for conceptualizing biological risk with existing data and methods. We also contrast allostatic load with theories of historical trauma such as posttraumatic slavery syndrome. Finally, we offer our suggestions for future interdisciplinary research on health disparities.
In their stormy response to Nancy MacLean’s book Democracy in Chains, some academics on the liber... more In their stormy response to Nancy MacLean’s book Democracy in Chains, some academics on the libertarian right have conducted a concerted defense of Nobel Laureate James Buchanan’s credentials as an anti-racist, or at least a non-racist. An odd component of their argument is a claim of innocence by association: the peripatetic South African economist and Mont Pelerin Society founding member William Harold Hutt was against apartheid; Buchanan was a friend and supporter of Hutt; therefore, Buchanan could not have been abetting segregationists with his support for public funding of segregationist private schools. At the core of this chain of argument is the inference that Hutt’s opposition to apartheid proves that Hutt himself was committed to racial equality. However, just as there were white supremacists who opposed slavery in the United States, we demonstrate Hutt was a white supremacist who opposed apartheid in South Africa. We document how Hutt embraced notions of black inferiority...
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