9 research outputs found
Buying In: Positional Competition, Schools, Income Inequality, and Housing Consumption
Social scientists have suggested that a key sociobehavioral consequence of rising inequality is intensifying market competition for advantageous positions in the opportunity structure, such as residences that afford access to high-quality public schools. We assess empirical implications of inequality-fueled positional competition theories (PCTs) by analyzing the relationships between metropolitan income inequality, households’ efforts to secure residential positions in desirable school districts, and housing consumption behavior. We assemble a unique data set, which contains longitudinal information on household finances, residences, and geographic locations from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics; information on the quality of the school attendance areas in which these households reside; and information about the local real estate market. We find that greater inequality is associated with steeper housing price premia for residences in desirable areas, more pronounced social class sorting on school quality when relocating, and greater salience of schools relative to other housing amenities in families’ housing expenditure functions. Families in high-inequality regions exhibit modestly greater willingness to pay more (relative to their own incomes) for a given improvement in school desirability. The analysis brings important empirical nuance to oft-invoked but untested theories about positional competition as a mechanism by which inequality affects behaviors, consumption, and markets
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Socio-Economic Variation in the Effect of Economic Conditions on Marriage and Non-marital Fertility: Evidence from the Great Recession
The United States has become increasingly characterized by stark class divides in family structure. Poor women are less likely to marry than their more affluent counterparts, but far more likely to have a birth outside of marriage. Recent theoretical and qualitative work at the intersection of demography and cultural sociology suggests that these patterns are generated because poor women have high, nearly unattainable, economic standards for marriage, but make a much weaker connection between economic standing and fertility decisions. We use the events of the Great Recession, leveraging variation in the severity of the crisis between years and across states, to examine how exposure to worse state-level economic conditions is related to poor women's likelihood of marriage and of having a non-marital birth between 2008 and 2012. In accord with theory, we find that women of low socio-economic status (SES) exposed to worse economic conditions are indeed somewhat less likely to marry. However, counter to theoretical expectations, we do not find evidence that economic standing is disconnected from non-marital fertility. Unmarried low-SES women exposed to worse economic conditions significantly reduce their fertility. Further, the relationship between recessionary conditions and non-marital fertility is of a similar magnitude to the relationship between marriage and economic conditions among low-SES women and the negative relationship between economic conditions and non-marital fertility among low-SES women is larger than the negative association between recessionary economic conditions and fertility among more advantaged women
Recommended from our members
Socio-Economic Variation in the Effect of Economic Conditions on Marriage and Non-marital Fertility: Evidence from the Great Recession
The United States has become increasingly characterized by stark class divides in family structure. Poor women are less likely to marry than their more affluent counterparts, but far more likely to have a birth outside of marriage. Recent theoretical and qualitative work at the intersection of demography and cultural sociology suggests that these patterns are generated because poor women have high, nearly unattainable, economic standards for marriage, but make a much weaker connection between economic standing and fertility decisions. We use the events of the Great Recession, leveraging variation in the severity of the crisis between years and across states, to examine how exposure to worse state-level economic conditions is related to poor women's likelihood of marriage and of having a non-marital birth between 2008 and 2012. In accord with theory, we find that women of low socio-economic status (SES) exposed to worse economic conditions are indeed somewhat less likely to marry. However, counter to theoretical expectations, we do not find evidence that economic standing is disconnected from non-marital fertility. Unmarried low-SES women exposed to worse economic conditions significantly reduce their fertility. Further, the relationship between recessionary conditions and non-marital fertility is of a similar magnitude to the relationship between marriage and economic conditions among low-SES women and the negative relationship between economic conditions and non-marital fertility among low-SES women is larger than the negative association between recessionary economic conditions and fertility among more advantaged women
schneider_online_supplement – Supplemental material for Income Inequality and Class Divides in Parental Investments
<p>Supplemental material, schneider_online_supplement for Income Inequality and Class Divides in Parental Investments by Daniel Schneider, Orestes P. Hastings and Joe LaBriola in American Sociological Review</p