Family Demography seminar syllabus

Taipei shopping district / pnc

Here’s my syllabus for Family Demography this semester. Play along at home!

I went for contemporary readings for most subjects, rather than classic readings. I’ll talk about the background myself, and I added an origin/impact analysis assignment, where students dig into the front end of the papers and figure out where they’re coming from – and then follow the citations to see where they went (if they’re not brand new). If I had my stuff together I’d have a better list of background readings as a supplement, but we have comprehensive exam readings lists for that, too. Anyway, we’ll see how that works.

I hope this is useful. Feel free to add your own supplemental readings and suggestions in the comments.

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Introduction

This course is designed to build knowledge on the key theories, empirical patterns, and contemporary debates in the study of family demography, with lesser attention to methodology. (Some students previously took my seminar Families and Modern Social Theory; those who haven’t may find interesting background material in that syllabus: http://www.terpconnect.umd.edu/~pnc/FMST-syllabus.pdf.)

Students are expected to read assigned material and write a response paper each week, and a summary essay or research report at the end of the semester. In addition, each student will do an origin/impact analysis of one of the assigned readings and make a brief presentation to the class. Evaluation will be based on participation, weekly writings, the presentation, and the final paper.

Universal learning

The principle of universal learning means that our classroom and our interactions be as inclusive as possible. Your success in this class is important to me. If there are circumstances that may affect your performance in this class, please let me know as soon as possible so that we can work together to meet both your needs and the requirements of the course. Students with particular needs should contact the UMD Disability Support Service (http://www.counseling.umd.edu/DSS/), which will forward the necessary information to me. Please do it now instead of waiting till late in the semester.

Rules

Academic integrity. Students must be familiar with the UMD Code of Academic Integrity (http://president.umd.edu/sites/president.umd.edu/files/documents/policies/III-100A.pdf). In this course there is zero tolerance for academic dishonesty.

Classroom conduct. Students should not come to class late, as this creates a distraction for those who are participating. If your schedule regularly does not permit you to be in class from beginning to end, do not take the course. Students who need to leave early should sit at the back and leave quietly. Students may not use laptops, tablet computers, or mobile phones in class. If you have a need for keeping your phone handy in class notify the professor in advance for an exception.

Discussion. We will discuss course readings and related material, as well as current events, social issues, and politics. Everyone is free to express personal opinions and disagree with others, including the professor – just raise your hand. All discussion must be polite and respectful, and differences of opinion are tolerated. The professor will work to ensure the classroom is a safe space for all of use to participate freely. Please let me know if you have any concerns or suggestions for accomplishing this.

SCHEDULE

January 31

Theoretical perspectives in demography

Samek, Diana, Bibiana D. Koh, and Martha A. Rueter. 2013. “Overview of Behavioral Genetics Research for Family Researchers.” Journal of Family Theory & Review 5 (3): 214–33. doi:10.1111/jftr.12013.

Ferree, Myra Marx. 2010. “Filling the Glass: Gender Perspectives on Families.” Journal of Marriage and Family 72(3):420-439.

Elder, Glen H., Jr. 1998. “The Life Course as Developmental Theory.” Child Development 69(1):1-12.

February 7

Demographic transition

Kirk, D. 1996. “Demographic Transition Theory.” Population Studies 50 (3): 361-.

Thornton, Arland. 2001. “The Developmental Paradigm, Reading History Sideways, and Family Change.” Demography 38 (4): 449–65. doi:10.2307/3088311

Balbo, Nicoletta, Francesco C. Billari, and Melinda Mills. 2013. “Fertility in Advanced Societies: A Review of Research.” European Journal of Population 29 (1): 1–38. doi:10.1007/s10680-012-9277-y.

Feng, Wang. 2011. “The Future of a Demographic Overachiever: Long-Term Implications of the Demographic Transition in China.” Population and Development Review 37: 173–90.

February 14

Fertility in poor countries

Yount, Kathryn M., Sarah Zureick-Brown, Nafisa Halim, and Kayla LaVilla. 2014. “Fertility Decline, Girls’ Well-Being, and Gender Gaps in Children’s Well-Being in Poor Countries.” Demography 51 (2): 535–61. doi:10.1007/s13524-014-0282-0.

Feng, Wang, Baochang Gu, and Yong Cai. 2016. “The End of China’s One-Child Policy.” Studies in Family Planning 47 (1): 83–86. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4465.2016.00052.x.

Kravdal, Oystein. 2012. “Further Evidence of Community Education Effects on Fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Demographic Research 27 (November): 646–. doi:10.4054/DemRes.2012.27.22.

Bongaarts, John, and Christophe Z. Guilmoto. 2015. “How Many More Missing Women? Excess Female Mortality and Prenatal Sex Selection, 1970–2050.” Population and Development Review 41 (2): 241–69. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2015.00046.x.

February 21

Second demographic transition

Geist, Claudia. 2017. “Marriage Formation in Context: Four Decades in Comparative Perspective.” Social Sciences 6 (1): 9. doi:10.3390/socsci6010009.

Lesthaeghe, Ron. 2010. “The Unfolding Story of the Second Demographic Transition.” Population and Development Review 36 (2): 211-.

Goldscheider, Frances, Eva Bernhardt, and Trude Lappegard. 2015. “The Gender Revolution: A Framework for Understanding Changing Family and Demographic Behavior.” Population and Development Review 41 (2): 207–+. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2015.00045.x.

Cohen, Philip N. 2011. “Homogamy Unmodified.” Journal of Family Theory & Review 3 (1): 47–51.

February 28

U.S. History

Ruggles. Steven. 2015. “Patriarchy, Power, and Pay: The Transformation of American Families, 1800-2015.” Demography 52: 1797-1823. (His lecture version at PAA.)

Cherlin, Andrew J. 2004. “The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage.” Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (4): 848–61.

Ruggles, Steven. 2007. “The Decline of Intergenerational Coresidence in the United States, 1850 to 2000.” American Sociological Review 72 (6): 964–89. doi:10.1177/000312240707200606.

Cohen, Philip N. 2014. The Family: Diversity, Inequality, and Social Change. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Chapter 2, “History.”

March 7

Marriage and social class

Cherlin, Andrew J. 2014. Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class Family in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Cohen, Philip N. 2014. The Family: Diversity, Inequality, and Social Change. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Chapter 8, “Marriage and cohabitation.”

March 14

Fatherhood: race, class, and multiple-partner fertility

Edin, Kathryn and Timothy Nelson. 2013. Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City. University of California Press.

March 21

Spring break

March 28

Transition to adulthood

Crosnoe, Robert, and Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson. 2011. “Research on Adolescence in the Twenty-First Century.” Annual Review of Sociology 37:439–60.

Dow, Dawn Marie. 2016. “The Deadly Challenges of Raising African American Boys: Navigating the Controlling Image of the ‘Thug.’” Gender & Society 30 (2): 161–88. doi:10.1177/0891243216629928.

Billari, Francesco C., and Aart C. Liefbroer. 2010. “Towards a New Pattern of Transition to Adulthood?” Advances in Life Course Research 15 (2–3, SI): 59–75. doi:10.1016/j.alcr.2010.10.003.

Ghimire, D. J., W. G. Axinn, S. T. Yabiku, and A. Thornton. 2006. “Social Change, Premarital Nonfamily Experience, and Spouse Choice in an Arranged Marriage Society.” American Journal of Sociology 111 (4): 1181–1218.

April 11

Economic conditions and family outcomes

Sweeney, Megan M., and R. Kelly Raley. 2014. “Race, Ethnicity, and the Changing Context of Childbearing in the United States.” Annual Review of Sociology 40:539–58.

Currie, Janet, and Hannes Schwandt. 2014. “Short- and Long-Term Effects of Unemployment on Fertility.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111 (41): 14734–39. doi:10.1073/pnas.1408975111.

Schneider, Daniel, Kristen Harknett, and Sara McLanahan. 2016. “Intimate Partner Violence in the Great Recession.” Demography 53 (2): 471–505. doi:10.1007/s13524-016-0462-1.

April 18

Policy, race, and nonmarital births

England, Paula. 2016. “Sometimes the Social Becomes Personal: Gender, Class, and Sexualities.” American Sociological Review 81 (1): 4–28.

Cohen, Philip N. 2015. “Maternal Age and Infant Mortality for White, Black, and Mexican Mothers in the United States.” Sociological Science 3 (January): 32–38.

Geronimus, Arline T. 2003. “Damned If You Do: Culture, Identity, Privilege, and Teenage Childbearing in the United States.” Social Science & Medicine 57 (5): 881–93.

Cohen, Philip N. Forthcoming. Enduring Bonds: Families and Modern Inequality, Chapter: “Marriage promotion [Excerpts]” 24pp. [to be provided]

April 25

More U.S. inequality issues

Musick, Kelly, and Robert D. Mare. 2006. “Recent Trends in the Inheritance of Poverty and Family Structure.” Social Science Research 35 (2): 471–99. doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2004.11.006.

Western, Bruce, and Christopher Wildeman. 2009. “The Black Family and Mass Incarceration.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 621 (1): 221–242.

Two selections from Families in an Era of Increasing Inequality (2015) edited by Paul R. Amato, Alan Booth, Susan M. McHale, and Jennifer Van Hook, 3–23. National Symposium on Family Issues 5. Springer International Publishing.

McLanahan, Sara, and Wade Jacobsen. “Diverging Destinies Revisited.”

Cohen, Philip N. 2015. “Divergent Responses to Family Inequality.”

May 2

Family structure and child wellbeing

Regnerus, Mark. 2012. “How Different Are the Adult Children of Parents Who Have Same-Sex Relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study.” Social Science Research 41 (4): 752–70. doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2012.03.009.

Rosenfeld, Michael J. 2015. “Revisiting the Data from the New Family Structure Study: Taking Family Instability into Account.” Sociological Science 2 (September): 478–501. doi:10.15195/v2.a23.

Cohen, Philip N. Forthcoming. Enduring Bonds: Families and Modern Inequality, Chapter: “Marriage equality in social science and the courts.” 19pp. [to be provided]

Gates, Gary J. 2015. “Marriage and Family: LGBT Individuals and Same-Sex Couples.” Future of Children 25(2):67-87.

May 9

Divorce, Remarriage and Stepfamilies

Amato, Paul R. 2010. “Research on Divorce: Continuing Trends and New Developments.” Journal of Marriage and Family 72(3):650-666.

Kennedy, Sheela, and Steven Ruggles. 2014. “Breaking Up Is Hard to Count: The Rise of Divorce in the United States, 1980–2010.” Demography 51 (2): 587–98. doi:10.1007/s13524-013-0270-9.

Cohen, Philip N. 2014. “Recession and Divorce in the United States, 2008–2011.” Population Research and Policy Review 33 (5): 615–28. doi:10.1007/s11113-014-9323-z.

Anderson, Lydia R. 2016. “Divorce Rate in the U.S.: Geographic Variation, 2015.” National Center for Marriage and Family Research. http://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/anderson-divorce-rate-us-geo-2015-fp-16-21.html.

Cohen, Philip N. 2016. “Life Table Says Divorce Rate Is 52.7%.” Family Inequality. June 8. https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2016/06/08/life-table-says-divorce-rate-is-52-7/.

Bennett, Neil G. 2017. “A Reflection on the Changing Dynamics of Union Formation and Dissolution.” Demographic Research 36 (12): 371–90. doi:10.4054/DemRes.2017.36.12.

 

Race/ethnicity and slacking at work

From John Henry: An American Legend, by Ezra Jack Keats

I gave some comments to an Economist writer for a story they just published, “New research suggests that effort at work is correlated with race.” They used a snippet of what I said, so I figured I’d dump the rest here (because the piece is not bylined, I’m not using the reporter’s name).

The article is about an NBER working paper (not yet peer reviewed) by, Daniel Hamermesh, Katie Genadek, and Michael Burda. It’s officially here, but I put a copy up in case you don’t have am NBER subscription.) The analysis uses the American Time Use Survey to see whether time at work spent not working varies by race/ethnicity, and they find that it does. The abstract:

Evidence from the American Time Use Survey 2003-12 suggests the existence of small but statistically significant racial/ethnic differences in time spent not working at the workplace. Minorities, especially men, spend a greater fraction of their workdays not working than do white non-Hispanics. These differences are robust to the inclusion of large numbers of demographic, industry, occupation, time and geographic controls. They do not vary by union status, public-private sector attachment, pay method or age; nor do they arise from the effects of equal-employment enforcement or geographic differences in racial/ethnic representation. The findings imply that measures of the adjusted wage disadvantages of minority employees are overstated by about 10 percent.

When the Economist contacted me, I consulted several colleagues for their response. Reeve Vanneman pointed out that minority workers might slack off at work because they are discriminated against, and Liana Sayer pointed out that the activity measures in the ATUS may not be not precise enough to say what if any “non-work” activity is actually contributing to the bottom line – the paper doesn’t detail what these “non-work” activities are. My own critique was that, before we start attributing work behavior to “culture,” we might consider whether work reporting behavior varies by “culture” as well (the ATUS uses self-reported time diaries). The authors did a little monkeying around with the General Social Survey to address that, but I found it unpersuasive.

Anyway, you can read the Economist article yourself. I would have preferred they killed the article, because I don’t think the paper sustains its conclusions, but they did a reasonable job of reporting it. And here are the full comments I sent them:

The analysis in the paper does not support the conclusion that wage disparities between blacks and whites are overstated. There just isn’t enough there to make that claim. As the authors note, the problem of differential reporting is an obvious concern. Their analysis of the “importance of work” questions in the GSS seems immaterial – it’s just not the same question.

This is exacerbated by the problem that they don’t describe the difference between work-related non-work activities and non-work-related non-work activities. We just don’t know enough about what they’re doing to draw the conclusion that the work-related activities are really productivity enhancing while the non-related activities are really not. (Consider trying to parse the effect of eating alone at your desk versus eating with a team-member in the cafeteria. Which is productivity enhancing?) It is always the case that jobs differ between blacks and whites in ways surveys do not capture – that’s the whole question of the wage gap. Controlling for things like industry and occupation helps but it’s the tip of the iceberg. For example, the difference between small and large employers, and between those with formal management procedures and those without, is not captured here.

Finally, consider the possibility of reverse-causality. What if blacks are discriminated against and paid less than whites for the same level of productivity – or treated poorly in other ways – a very reasonable hypothesis? Might that not lead those black workers to be less devoted to their employers, and spend more time on other things when no one is looking? I wouldn’t blame them.

In short, the paper uses a lot of ambiguous information, which is interesting and suggestive, to draw a conclusion that is not warranted. It’s part of a tradition in economics of assuming there must be some rational basis for pay disparities, and looking really hard to find it, rather than treating employer motivations more skeptically and trusting the voluminous evidence of racist bias in the labor market.

In the email exchange, they asked for followup on the evidence of racial bias, so I added this:

The best evidence of discrimination is from audit studies. This is one of the best. That author, Michael  Gaddis at Penn State, can talk much more about it, but the point is that even when you can’t identify an individual act of racism, in the aggregate employer behavior shows a preference for whites — as we can tell by imposing experimental conditions in which the only thing different between resumes is the names. Other approaches include studying disparities in performance evaluation (e.g., this [by Marta Elvira and Robert Town]), or analyzing discrimination case files directly (e.g., this [by Ryan Light, Vincent Roscigno, and Alexandra Kalev]).

That all got reduced to this, in the article: “Worse treatment by managers of minority workers may itself encourage slacking, says Philip Cohen.” (Though they went on to cite evidence that workers work less when their managers are biased against them.)

On the other hand

As I think about it more, there is another important angle on this, which goes back to Reeve’s comment, and also something in the conclusion to the Economist article:

Within hours of publication, Mr Hamermesh received vitriolic messages and was labelled a racist in an online forum popular among economists. Mr Hamermesh, an avowed progressive, who refers to Donald Trump only by amusing nicknames and resigned from a post at the University of Texas over a state law permitting the open carrying of firearms, finds this unfair. He notes that Americans work too much. His preferred solution would not be for some groups to work more, but for others to work less.

There is an understandable anti-racist tendency to want to avoid a story of minority workers as lazy and shiftless – which is a character flaw. But there is a resistance story to tell as well, and the liberal anti-racist approach papers it over. For this, we need historian Robin D. G. Kelley, who wrote a brilliant paper called, “‘We Are Not What We Seem’: Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South” (free copy here). Here’s a relevant excerpt, in which he cites W. E. B. Du Bois:

Part of the reason [labor historians have not written more about workplace theft and sabotage by Southern Blacks], I think, lies in southern labor historians’ noble quest to redeem the black working class from racist stereotypes. In addition, company personnel records, police reports, mainstream white newspaper accounts, and correspondence have left us with a somewhat serene portrait of black folks who only occasionally deviate from what I like to call the “cult of true Sambohood.” The safety and ideological security of the South required that pilfering, slowdowns, absenteeism, tool breaking, and other acts of black working-class resistance be turned into ineptitude, laziness, shiftlessness, and immorality. But rather than reinterpret these descriptions of black working-class behavior, sympathetic labor historians are often too quick to invert the images, remaking the black proletariat into the hardest working, thriftiest, most efficient labor force around. Historians too readily naturalize the Protestant work ethic and project onto black working people as a whole the ideologies of middle-class and prominent working-class blacks. But if we regard most work as alienating, especially work done amid racist and sexist oppression, then a crucial aspect of black working-class struggle is to minimize labor with as little economic loss as possible. Let us recall one of Du Bois’s many beautiful passages from Black Reconstruction: “All observers spoke of the fact that the slaves were slow and churlish; that they wasted material and malingered at their work. Of course they did. This was not racial but economic. It was the answer of any group of laborers forced down to the last ditch. They might be made to work continuously but no power could make them work well.”

Working hard for the man’s benefit is not the only way to build character.

Family syllabus supplements for Spring 2017

People using my book for in their classes get excellent teaching materials from Norton to use. They also have a Facebook group for sharing ideas and materials (instructors visit here). For extra support, and to maximize timeliness, I also regularly update this list of blog posts that might help you with your course, whether or not you’re using my book.

As in previous lists, there are recent posts and some older favorites. Plenty of good material is still available on the supplements 2013, 2014, and 2015. As always, I appreciate feedback on what works and what doesn’t.

1. Introduction

• Interview: Independence, uncertainty, defamilialization: I did a radio interview on family trends, and drew on some themes related to modernity and individualization that show up in Chapter 1.
• Why I called it The Family, and what that has to do with Cosby: Explaining the origins of the “family as an institutional arena” frame I used in the book — and how the secrets in real and imaginary families like the Huxtables illustrate the concept.
• Deciphering a well-told data story, cars are good for kids edition: A parable of misleading statistical stories inspired by recent claims about marriage, with tips for critical reading.

2. History

• This word ‘generation,’ I do not think it means what you think it means: How people talk about “Millennials,” and what a historical cohort means.
• Diversity is the new normal (pdf): A short report I wrote explaining family demographic trends, comparing the 1950s and today.

3. Race, ethnicity, and immigration

• Why Heritage is wrong on the new Census race/ethnicity question: The Census Bureau has good ideas about improving data collection on race and ethnicity. Will the new regime let them do it?
• Black men raping White women: BJS’s Table 42 problem: American racists have always loved the Black rapist myth. Unfortunately, the government helped them with a badly constructed table.
• Six grueling demographic indicators of Detroit’s decline (and some pictures): The population dropped 64% since 1950, and shifted from 16% Black to more than 80% Black. The city that remains is a demographic disaster.

4. Social class

• US policy fails at reducing child poverty because it aims to fix the poor: An essay I wrote for the Washington Post argues for getting poor people more money instead of getting them to change their family behavior.
• Policy, politics, and promoting education versus marriage: Instead of blaming poor women for not being married, how about decreasing the number of poor women, by increasing access to higher education?
• Turns out marriage and income inequality go pretty well together: Does the decline of marriage increase economic inequality? Yes and no.

5. Gender

• My, what dimorphic parents you have! Updating Disney dimorphism to include Moana, with a look at extremely different parents.
• Transgender discrimination is sex discrimination: A brief argument for using the law on sex discrimination to protect transgender rights, in response to the former Obama administration’s education reforms.
• Pregnancy discrimination and the gender gap, involuntary job choice edition: One example helps illustrate the problem of measuring the gender gap by comparing men and women in the same jobs.

6. Sexuality

• Couple fact patterns about sexuality and attitudes: Updating trends on attitudes toward homosexuality; and same sex behavior, identity, and attraction.
• What was I supposed to do, not report the results? What if it’s true that women are more likely to wear red on dates — does that mean our sexual behavior is “hard wired”? I don’t think so.

7. Love and romantic relationships

• Is dating still dead? The death of dating is now 50 years old, and its been eulogized so many times that its feelings are starting to get hurt.
• Online dating: efficiency, inequality, and anxiety: I’m skeptical about efficiency, and concerned about inequality, as more dating moves online. Some of the numbers I use in this post are already dated, but this could be good for a debate about dating rules and preferences.
• Is the price of sex too damn low? To hear some researchers tell it in a recent YouTube video, women in general — and feminism in particular — have ruined not only sex, but society itself. The theory is wrong. Also, they’re insanely sexist.

8. Marriage and cohabitation

• We can’t build our social system around marriage anymore: Marriage has declined in every state every decade since 1980. So what are you going to do about it?
• This “Supporting Health Marriage,” I do not think it means what you think it means: More than a billion dollars taken from the welfare program to promote marriage, and not a single healthy marriage to show it.
• Does gay marriage make straight men hate children? In the steadily losing battle against marriage equality, one of the more pernicious claims is that gay marriage threatens to turn all men against children.

9. Families and children

• The fathers behind teen births (or, statistical memes and motivated blind trust): A combination demography and media literacy post, in which I pick on a popular meme. (I followed up with a meme attempt of my own.)
• International adoption to the US has fallen 75%: Updating the trend, with detail on the countries of origin, and some explanation for what’s going on with China.
• Delayed parenting and anti-poverty policy: Policies intended to prevent poverty by delaying parenthood are mostly misplaced, especially with regard to Black women.

10. Divorce, remarriage, and blended families

I never put this on the blog, but here’s my update for divorce rates through 2015.

• The liberalization of divorce attitudes proceeds apace: More and more Americans think divorce is morally acceptable, and should be easier to get.
• Life table says divorce rate is 52.7%: Spelling out my method for estimating the risk of divorce from marriage through death (or divorce, whichever comes first).
• Check that: Most marrying people are remarrying above age 31: As the age at first marriage rises, second and third weddings are taking a larger share of the limelight.

11. Work and families

• Why male and female ‘breadwinners’ aren’t equivalent (in one chart): Pushing back on the tendency to call women who earn $.01 more than their husbands “breadwinners.”
• How Can We Jump-Start the Struggle for Gender Equality? In this New York Times essay, I argue for paid family leave, reduced work hours, and public child care.
• What drives the rise of stay at home fathers? How you interpret the trend depends on how you define stay at home fathers. With the “hardcore” definition, stay at home mothers still outnumber stay at home fathers 24-to-1.

12. Family violence and abuse

• Survivor bias and the 92% of Southern Black men who support spanking: With NFL family violence in the news, I asked why so many Americans rationalize spanking by referring to their own childhoods.
• Getting beyond how the ‘Factual Feminist’ is wrong about the prevalence of rape: It’s not perfect, but if you had to pick a number it’s reasonable to estimate that one in five women will be a victim of rape in their lifetime.
• Final proof there is no human tragedy Brad Wilcox will not exploit in order to promote marriage: Did he really just say that women should get married if they don’t want to be raped? (In fact, marriage and rape have both fallen a lot in the last few decades.)

13. The future of the family

• Thought leader for a day: Families in uncertain times: I gave an interview on diversity and uncertainty, and — yes — plasticity in family life.
• Get your dependency ratio off my lawn: Old people are doing more work than they used to. A new way of showing how much weight they pull now.
• Tripping on tipping points: Minority births are now the majority. Is this a tipping point, a milestone, or a watershed? On the importance of accurately representing trends.

Sex segregation propositions in 140 characters

In response to an annoying conversation on Twitter about this short paper, which felt very familiar, here is an argument about the sex segregation of work, in the form of unsourced propositions of 140 characters or less. You can find most of these in longer form in various posts under the segregation tag. It’s tweetstorm, in one post!

Many studies show men and women have mean differences in personality and preferences, although there is overlap in the distributions; but

Every respondent in any such study was born and raised in a male-dominated society, because all societies are male dominated.

Most people in the debates I see, being elites, act like everyone is a college graduate who chose their job, or “field” of work; but

We know lots of people are in jobs they didn’t freely choose or didn’t get promoted out of, for reasons related to gender (like pregnancy).

No one knows how much segregation results from differences in choices of workers vs. parent/employer/educator pressure or constraints; and

The level of sex segregation varies across social contexts (across space and time), which means it is not all caused by biology; and

Because segregation causes inequality and constrains human freedom, and we have the means to reduce it, the biology theory is harmful; so

Go ahead and study the biology of sex differences, because society is interesting, but don’t use that as an excuse for inequality.

Cause and effect on myopia

Photo PNC / https://flic.kr/p/f2uKgJ

It’s funny for a non-eye specialist to read articles about myopia, which in my line of work rarely means myopia, literally, which is nearsightedness. Takes some getting used to.

Anyway, in my book I use as an example of misleading correlations the link between night lights and myopia in children. Checking it to make sure it is still a good example to keep for the second edition, I was glad to see that it holds up well.

Here’s the story. In a 1999 paper (paywalled | sci-hub), Quinn and colleagues reported a “strong association between myopia and night-time ambient light exposure during sleep in children before they reach two years of age.” That is, kids who slept with night lights were more likely to be nearsighted. This was potentially big news, because we actually don’t fully understand why people become nearsighted, except we know it has to do with reading a lot and spending a lot of time indoors as a kid. They had some idea that light penetrating the eyelids at night might do something, but no real mechanism, just an association over a few hundred kids.

The paper didn’t have some important variables controlled, notably parents’ nearsightedness. Since the condition is also genetic, this was acknowledged as a problem. Still, they wrote:

Although it does not establish a causal link, the statistical strength of the association of night-time light exposure and childhood myopia does suggest that the absence of a daily period of darkness during early childhood is a potential precipitating factor in the development of myopia.

As I stress ad nausem in this post, the “strength” of an association is not an argument for its causal power. And neither is the number of studies in which the association is found. Real spurious findings can produce very strong, easily-reproducible results. And when researchers have a story to fit the rationale can seem strong. Also, the prospect of publishing in a top journal like Nature has to figure in there somewhere. (This problem is endemic in studies of, for example, family structure and child outcomes, among many other subjects.)

In this case there is a very nice explanation, which was reported less than a year later by Zadnik and colleagues (paywalled | sci-hub), who found no association between night lights and myopia – but they did report a very strong relationship between night lights and parents’ myopia. The same pattern was reported in another response to the Quinn paper, in the same issue, by Gwiazda and colleagues. It appears that nearsighted parents like to leave night lights on. Alternately, some other factor causes parental nearsightedness, child nearsightedness, and night light preference, such as education level (e.g., more-educated people read more and use night lights more).

Several other studies have also failed failed to confirm the night-light theory, and now the thing seems to have blown over. It’s not a perfect example, because the bivariate correlation isn’t always found, but I like it as a family-related case. So I think I’ll keep it in.

Poverty, marriage, and single mother update

With the annual Census report on poverty out, here are two quick updates.

First, updating this post, the share of all poverty (using official rates) found in single-mother families remains lower than it was from 1974 to 2000. Since 1995, as the poverty rate has gone up and down between 10 and 15 percent, the share of poor people in single-mother families has fallen. As of 2015, 34% of poor people are found in single-mother families.

Marriage has declined, and single motherhood has increased, but that has not produced a poverty population more dominated by single-mother families. Of course these families are more likely to be poor than married-couple families, but they’re not the main poverty story.

Second, updating this post a little, it’s important to keep two major trends in the back of your mind when thinking about social change. The first is that marriage has declined precipitously since 1960. It’s unremitting decline is one of the major social facts of our time. The other trend to keep in mind is that poverty rates fell a lot after the 1960s, but since then have bounced around at an atrocious 10-15%. Now try to keep them both in mind at once: marriage falls, poverty goes up and down. This year’s update puts those together (sorry people who hate this kind of figure), as change in the percentage of women married, and change in the percentage of the population poor.

For a recent op-ed on poverty and marriage, here’s the unpaywalled version of my essay in the Washington Post‘s Post Everything.

Do we get tenure for this?

For the occasion I titled this photo of Utah “Openness.”

Colleen Flaherty at Inside Higher Ed has written up the American Sociological Association’s committee report, “What Counts? Evaluating Public Communication in Tenure and Promotion.”

I was once a member of the ASA Subcommittee on the Evaluation Of Social Media and Public Communication In Sociology, which was chaired by Leslie McCall when they produced the report. (It is a subcommittee of the task force on engaging sociology, convened by then-President Annette Lareau.)

It’s worth reading the whole article, which also includes comments from Sara Ovink, McCall and me, in addition to the report. Having thought about this issue a little, I was happy to respond to Flaherty’s request for comment. These are the full comments I sent her, from which she quoted in the article:

1. We don’t need credit toward promotion for every thing we do. Scholars who take a public-facing stance in their work often find that it enhances the quality and quantity of their work in the traditional fields of assessment (research, teaching, service), so that separately rewarding the public work is not always necessary. I don’t need credit for having a popular blog – that work has led to new research ideas, better feedback on my research, better grad students, teaching ideas, invitations to contribute to policy, and book contracts.

2. We’d all love to be promoted for authoring a great tweet but no one wants to be fired for a bad one. Assessment of public engagement needs to be holistic and qualitative, taking into the account quality, quantity, and impact of the work. Simplistic quantitative metrics will not be useful.

3. It is also important to value and reward openness in our routine work, such as posting working papers, publishing in open access journals, sharing replication files, and disseminating open teaching materials. Public engagement does not need to mean separate activities and products, but can mean taking a public-facing stance in our existing work.

The SocArxiv project is one outcome of these conversations (links to latest info; submit a paper), especially relating to point #3 above. Academics who open up their work should be recognized for that contribution to the public good and for promoting the future of academia. In that spirit also I proposed a rule change for the ASA Dissertation Award, which now includes this:

To be eligible for the ASA Dissertation Award, candidates’ dissertations must be publicly available in Dissertation Abstracts International or a comparable outlet. Dissertations that are not available in this fashion will not be considered for the award.

It’s hard to change everything, but it’s not that hard to make some important changes in the right direction. Rewarding engagement and openness is an important step in the right direction.