Competitive Individualism and the Persistence of Minority Disadvantage

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51088/1/320.pd

Housework by Husbands Determinants and Implications

WOMEN continue to carry disproportionate responsibility for household tasks. A study of 650 Detroit women reveals that attitudes, employment status, life cycle, and husband's income all contribute to husband's housework effort. Some evidence is presented that the greater the earnings differential of husband over wife, the less he contributes in help at home.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67012/2/10.1177_0192513X8100200207.pd

Ethnic Bonds in the Work Place: Blacks, Italians, and Jews in New York City.

A number of perspectives from human capital theory to labor market segmentation have offered insights that explain ethnic stratification. This dissertation adds two relatively neglected dimensions of the employment experience, ethnic segregation and ethnic authority, as additional determinants of ethnic opportunity. Since minority workers frequently experience job segregation and occasionally labor under co-ethnic authority figures, this study investigates the role of these variables in the determination of ethnic achievement. Because the process of ethnic stratification is an historical one, the dissertation examines ethnic segregation and ethnic authority in past time. The scope of the study is further limited to black, Italian, and Jewish males in New York City. Three types of data are examined: a sample of workers extracted from the 1910 federal census manuscripts, published statistics for the years 1930-1970, and job histories obtained from interviews with elderly migrants. Information about ethnic segregation and ethnic authority is secured directly from the interviewees. In the case of the census data and the published statistics, it is necessary to construct more indirect measures of these variables. The solution is to aggregate these ethnic indicators at the industrial level. The major outcome variable is occupational status, with secondary attention to job security. The analysis is essentially statistical in nature, with the level of sophistication scaled to the quality of the data. The investigation also draws on qualitative information, particularly literary and historical accounts and the oral commentary of the respondents. The findings indicate that ethnic segregation depresses occupational achievement for blacks, Italians, and Jews alike. However, the data hint at the possibility that blacks benefit from segregation once their proportions in the city become quite large. Ethnic authority, on the other h and , emerges as an occupational advantage for all groups. Hence, the study confirms the importance of the ethnic quality of jobs for the attainment process, while introducing new methods for measuring these variables in a variety of contexts.Ph.D.Ethnic studiesUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/160570/1/8512474.pd