Social Stratification Exam 2

The Sociological Framework of Opposite Consequences

All social phenomena have opposite consequences at the same time

Workers involved in strikes

- In 2018, the majority of Teachers went on strikes - Teachers now earn a record 18.7% less in wages than comparable workers - Men on average get paid less than women teachers

Housing and Wealth

- Remember 80% of the wealth in the United States is owned by the 20% of the richest tier - When race is part of the analysis of wealth, black and Latino families have very little wealth compared to whites: 5 cents of all dollar's white families own. "On average, African Americans and Latinos have less than 8% of the wealth of whites." - Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans and other ethnoracial groups today face a historical legacy of being legally shut out of ways to amass wealth and continue to face barriers - More white people live in low-poverty neighborhoods have many fathers as opposed to blacks. The disparity is even greater in high poverty neighborhoods

Panama Papers

2016, leak of 11.5 million Internal Legal Documents

Paradise Papers

2017, 13.4 million leaked confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments

National Labor Relations Act

A 1935 law, also known as the Wagner Act, guarantees workers the right to collective bargaining sets down rules to protect unions and organizers, and created the National Labor Relations Board to regulate labor-management relations.

Explaining the Contributing Factors to Wealth Inequality

A study done by Shapiro, Meschede, & Osoro in 2013 explained that five influences shape wealth differences among ethnoracial groups - Saving or consumption patterns were not factors - The significant factors: years of homeownership, household income, years of employment, college education, and inheritances or financial help from family - The MOST influential were years of homeownership

Subsidized Homeownership Limited to Whites

Between 1933 and 1978, U.S. government policies enabled over 35 million families to increase their wealth through housing equity. As homeowners, millions of Americans were able to begin to accumulate the tax savings, home equity, economic stability, and other benefits associated with home ownership. White Americans benefited disproportionately from this shift for two primary reasons: (1) it was easier for white people to purchase homes, and (2) the homes that whites bought increased in value more rapidly than those purchased by blacks because of the perceived desirability of all-white neighborhoods

Institutional Discrimination

Crack Cocaine vs. Powder Cocaine: 1986 Law - 10 grams of crack = 10 years in prison - 1,000 grams of powder cocaine = 10 years in prison 2010 law: - 28 grams of crack = 5 years in prison - 280 grams of crack = 10 years in prison 1992: 93% of those convinced for crack offenses were black 2009: 80% of those convicted for crack offenses were Black - 33% of Whites and 5% of Blacks reported use of crack in their lifetime

Government Redistribution

When all of these exclusions itemized deductions for charitable expenses, mortgage interests, capital gains on home sales, and so forth are added up, they cost the federal government about $751 billion a year - The bottom 20% share of these collective tax breaks is 0.7%, or $55 billion - The top 20% got $597 billion

Wealthy hold money from the tax man

- Chief economist for the global consulting firm McKinsy, James Henry, estimated that wealthy families have hidden financial assets of between $21 trillion and $32 trillion in offshore accounts to avoid taxes in their home countries - The wealthy are aided by banks such as HSBC Holdings (a British multinational), UBS ( a Swiss financial company), Credit Suisse, and Goldman Sachs - 1/3 of all offshore wealth ($10 trillion) is held by only 100,000 people, or 0.000014% of the world's 7 billion human population

The Opioid Epidemic

- Deaths from opioid overdoses are very concentrated, especially in Appalachia and other economically distressed areas

Differences in graduation rates

- In the U.S. those whose parents did not graduate from high school, only one in twenty (5%) will manage to graduate from college - Of the twenty richest countries in the world it is one in four (25%)

Why COVID-19 is so bad

- No immunity - Highly contagious - Asymptomatic transition - Relatively high mortality

Social Darwinism

Some people have natural qualities that made them more fit, more adaptable members of society, while others lacked such traits

Pandora Papers

- 2021, 11.9 million records liked from 14 different offshore service firms

The gov't redistributes, but not well

- 60% of all tax preferences flow to the wealthiest 20% of Americans, and only 3% to the bottom 20% (Economist, 2012) - Tax deductions are available on mortgages up to $1 million - Tax deductions are available on gold-plated health insurance plans - in 1960 the top 1% paid 44.4% on their earnings, but by 2004 the marginal tax rate had dropped to 30.4% - The top rate on capital gain is 20%

Marriage in America

- 71% of men are married to women with a college degree and 64% of college educated women are married to a man with a college degree - in 2012, the median income for a household in which both people were married, and working was $91,779 - Where the wife stays at home $50,881 - Single father $42,385 - Single mother $30,686 - Being single carries with its significant economic penalties, and single headed households now constitutes 26% of all households

Low-income workers benefit primarily from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)

- A refundable tax credit determined by one's salary and the number of children in the home - 25% of all families (30 million) low- and moderate-income families receive these benefits - All refundable credits (including the EITC and child credit) cost the federal government around $122 billion a year

Other Forms of Wealth Inequality

- Along with differentials in equity and foreclosure in housing along racialized lines, the amount of debt in general is another inequality. "In 2002, over a quarter of black and Latino households had negative net worth, compared with 13 percent of white households - Stocks owned by blacks and Latinos declined in value during 2007 at eh start of the financial crisis, more than the stocks owned by Whites and Asians - Whites and blacks earning the same incomes do not get equal benefits. Whites are more apt to have employers paying for medical care and paying into a retirement plan - In research done over 25 years by a group of scholars headed by Shapiro, "36 percent of white households inherited some money over the 25-year period under study, compared with only 7 percent of black households."

Trump Tax Cuts for the Wealthy

- Although, the Trump-GOP (2017) tax law too was sold as a boon for the middle class, three years after its passage, there are no signs that working Americans are getting the pay raise they were promised - The former Trump administration claimed the corporate tax cuts would eventually lead to wage increases of up to $9,000 a year for ordinary workers. But so far, workers' wages remain stagnant - Tracking by Americans for Tax Fairness shows that only about 400 out of America's 5.9 million employers have announced any wage increases or one-time bonuses related to the tax cuts. That about 0.007 percent - In fact, real wages have actually declined after accounting for higher gas prices, prescription drug prices and other rising costs

Income inequality

- American paychecks are bigger than 40 years ago, but their purchasing power has hardly budged - Many teachers went on strikes in 2018 protesting higher pay rates - Wage increases in the U.S. rise to top earners - 90th percentile incomes rose from around $1,750 to $2,200 - 75th Percentile incomes rose from around $1,250 to $1,300

Though groups of color generally are younger relative to Whites, they are more likely to have certain underlying health conditions

- Among nonelderly adults, Blacks and AIANs have higher rates of asthma and diabetes compared to Whites - Further, nonelderly adult AIANs are nearly twice as likely as Whites are to report having had a heart attack or heart disease - Black, Hispanic, AIAN, and NHOPI nonelderly adults and Black and Hispanic children also are more likely to be obese compared to whites

Infant Mortality & Race

- As infant mortality has declined, the gap between Black and White rates has persisted Causes: - Living conditions - Overall health - Health care - Discrimination

Disparate impact

- Black and Hispanic death rates from COVID-19 are much higher than white rates - The gap is largest in the working ages of 18-64, with rations of 5-to 8-to-1

Predatory Lending in the 1990s and 2000s

- Discrimination in the real estate market took the form of the kinds of loans disproportionately targeted to people of color - Even with the same credit scores, people of color were still offered the less quality types of loans (subprime loans) - Between 1993 and 2000, the percentage of subprime mortgages in black and Latino neighborhoods rose from 2 to 18%. Overall, black and Latino families were about twice as likely to receive subprime loans as white families - Segregated black areas were also targeted for subprime loans by unregulated mortgage brokers

Segregation: A Contemporary Problem (Massey and Denton's American Apartheid)

- Estimate 35% of Black population in the United States Lives in hyper segregation - To achieve integration 2/3 of Blacks would have to move to white neighborhoods

Theory of Fundamental Causes

- Explains why the relationship between socioeconomic status and health outcomes is so persistent - Context: Improving public health - Rising living standards - Water / sewer, nutrition - Medical technology - Education, health behavior

More on Taxes

- For the first time, analysis shows how dozens of members of Congress could personally benefit from the tax bill they voted for and helped craft. On average personal windfall of up to $280,960 from a single loophole they included in the final Trump tax cut bill. The new analysis examined the personal financial disclosures of every Member of Congress who voted for the bill and calculated how they will benefit from the passthrough loophole, including the infamous "Corker Kickback," which was mysteriously inserted into the legislation at the last minute to expand the loophole to real estate income

Corporations avoiding taxes

- French economist, Gabriel Zuchman, calculated that 20% of all corporate profits in the United States have been shifted offshore and as much as 8% of the global financial wealth of all households

China's Income inequality

- Gini coefficient in 2015 was 0.55 - The top 10% in China took home 60% of all the nations income - The poorest 25% of Chinese households own just 1% of the country's total wealth - The Gini coefficient has risen in China from 0.3 in the 1980s - " The rapid rise in income inequality can be partly attributed to long standing gov't development policies that effectively favor urban over rural residents and favor coastal, more developed regions, over inland, less developed regions

Today's Elites Are the Children & Grandchildren of Yesterday's Elites

- Gregory Clark tracked family surnames over 800 years to measure relative mobility in different nations, including the U.S., China, Sweden, and England What he found was that there never has been much mobility

Health Disparities

- Health disparities are preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, violence, or opportunities to achieve optimal health that are experienced by socially disadvantaged populations

Human-caused climate change is worsening human health in just about every measurable way

- Heat sparks violence and disrupts sleep - Wildfire smoke can trigger respiratory events thousands of miles away - Flooding can increase rates of suicide and mental health problems - Warmer winters expand the range of disease-carrying mosquitoes and ticks - Last year, 22 climate related disasters cased more than a billion dollars in damage in the U.S. - People over age 65 experienced roughly 3 billion more combined days of dangerous heat exposure compared with a baseline establishment just 16 years ago - Earlier this year, more than 200 medical journals put out an unprecedented joint statement, calling climate change the "greatest threat" to global public health and urging the world's top economies to do more to slow it - Without rapid reductions in climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions, the planet is expected to warm to a point where large parts of it become barely habitable, with seas overtaking cities and devastating natural disasters becoming commonplace

Social Mobility General Trends

- High-income families pass their advantages on to their children - Low-income families pass their disadvantages on to their children - Social Mobility in developed countries has slowed

Housing and Wealth

- Homeownership is one way wealth is measured - Wealth also is money or valuables that are not used to pay for daily expenses - Wealth is the sum total of a person's assets cash in the bank and the value of all property, not only land but houses, cars, stocks and bonds, and retirement savings minus debt. It is something built up over a lifetime and passed on to the next generation through inheritances U.S. middle income (75%-200% of national median) households spend a growing share of their budget on housing

The relationship between parents' socioeconomic status and that of their kids is significant

- In France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.A., at least 40% of the economic advantage of high-earning parents is passed on to their children - Whereas in Australia, Norway, Finland, and Canada, only 20% of a parents' advantages are passed along to children (Causa and Johansson, 2010) - Generally, the higher a country's degree of social inequality among its citizens, the lower its economic and social mobility

Anti-miscegenation laws

- Made it illegal to marry someone of a different race - ruled unconstitutional in 1967 by the SCOUTS in Loving V. Virginia

Whom you marry matters in terms of your mobility

- Marital patterns, driven by changes in the role of women, heavily influence social mobility - Take China for example: -Because of China's 1980 one-child policy and the sex-selected abortions that occurred because of it, there are 120 men for every 100 women - Overall, 55% of Chinese college-educated men will marry women who are less educated but only 32% of college women will do the same

Income inequality in access to high quality education

- One study of 46 industrialized countries found the United States ranked 42nd in providing equitable distribution of teachers to different groups of students: For example, while 68 percent of upper-income 8th graders in the U.S. study sample had math teachers deemed to be of high-quality, that was true for only 53 percent of low-income students

How would you improve your child's life chances?

- One way is to provide them with access to top-quality medical and dental care - Another is to buy a house in a top public school district - Bit if public school budgets are slashed, as they were during the Great Recession? - The rich can send their children to private elementary and secondary schools, where enrollments increased by 36% between 2007 and 2011

More on Economic inequality

- Our schools are more segregated today than in 1980 - The marriage gap has widened over the past 50 years - Blacks are still far more likely to be uninsured than whites. That's true for both adults and children - Black incarceration rates are higher among blacks than whites and higher among males than females - Racial incarceration disparity is largely driver by America's war on drugs

Impacts of the Pandemic in the U.S.

- Over 73 million lost work between Mar. 21 and Dec. 26, 2020 - Nearly 100,000 businesses have permanently closed - 12 million workers have likely lost employer-sponsored health insurance during the pandemic as of August 26, 2020 - Some 29 million adults reported between Dec 9-21 that their household had not had enough food in the past week - From Nov. 25-Dec 7, 2020 between 8 and 12 million children lived in a household where kids did not eat enough because the household could not afford to fully feed them - 14 million adults 1 in 5 renters reported in December being behind in their rent

Life Expectancy and Income

- People with higher family incomes live longer, because of better living conditions, healthcare, and health behavior

Two Types of Discrimination

- Personal or Individual Discrimination - Discrimination by individuals or small groups Institutional Discrimination: - Policies and treatment that systematically disadvantage a minority group - Discrimination built into the "social fabric" or structure of society

Learning from Fundamental Cause Theory

- Poor resources affect living conditions - Lower education and discrimination affect job types - Unequal workplace policies leave them vulnerable - Poor healthcare, or lack of healthcare, affect outcomes - All of this may affect disparate Black and Hispanic impact, and other disparities

Differences in graduation rates by country

- Portugal, Slovenia, Finland, Japan and the United Kingdom report graduation rates of between 92 and 96% - In the U.S. it's 76% - Every year 3 million students in the U.S. it's 76% - Every year 3 million students in the U.S. or 8.1% of the total high school population, drop out of school - On average, the person who drops out will earn $20,000 a year while the person who graduated from high school will earn $36,000 a year

There is considerable evidence that going to pre-school and graduating from college can boost one's income over a lifetime

- Sabino Kornrich, sociology professor from Emory Univertisy, studies the expenditures of families from all income levels during the Great Recession (2007-2010). All parents either spent the same or cut down slightly on expenses such as childcare, food, books, toys, and clothing - However, one group, the top 10% of income earners, doubled down on their children's futures. Average spending per child for education went up 35% during the recession

Segregation

- Segregation prevents wealth from accumulating as educational institutions important for bettering future generations experience less funding in communities of color and property values are lower - Segregation of blacks and whites did not occur until between 1900 and 1940 this was due, in part, to white flight many whites left the cities to move to the suburbs where their homes were subsidized by federal mortgages - More importantly, several legal forms of discrimination and institutional exclusionary practices occurred during this time period

Soaring Tuition & Shrinking Incomes are Making College Less and Less Affordable

- Since 1978, college and tuition fees have increased by 1,120% Over this period: (That's four times faster than the increase in the consumer price index.) - Medical expenses have climbed 601% - The average tuition at four-year public universities increased by 15% between 2008 and 2010 alone - In the U.S. taxpayers paid 36 cents of every dollar spent on high school and higher education - In OECD countries taxpayers picked up 68 cents of every dollar spent - In 2014 average cost to attend Ivy League schools was 45 thousand a year

Smoking and Education

- Smoking and other harmful health behaviors are more common among people with lower levels of education

Racism

- Socially organized sets of attitudes, ideas, and practices that deny racial minorities the opportunities, freedom, and rewards that is offered to the dominant group - Racism is socially structured and it can be socially sanctioned

Labor Unions

- Spike in labor unions during World War II - Peak in 1945

How COVID-19 Spreads

- Spreads through droplets when someone coughs or sneezes or exhales strongly, and by aerosolized droplets, which linger in the air. Asymptomatic patients can be infectious

Janus

- Supreme court decision in 2018 that stated unions can't require people to pay dues - inequality increased during this period as labor union participation went down

How Much Money are we Talking About?

- Suzanne Mettler, a professor of government at Cornell University calculated the percentage of family income necessary to send a child to college - Breaking income groups down into five categories, she found that in 1971 it took 42% of the annual income of members of the poorest fifth of families - By 2011... it was 114% - On the other extreme, in the top 20%, this share increased from 6% to 9%

The Education Achievement Gap Has Been Growing for at Least 40 Years

- The "achievement gap" in education refers to the disparity in academic performance between groups of students - Before 1970 educational achievements were less influenced by income, now differences in family income account for between 30 and 60% of the differences in educational achievement

What does the U.S. Get for All of Our EDU Spending?

- The U.S. spends on average $11,000 for each elementary student - $12,000 for each high school student - $15,171 for each college or vocational training student - Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development showed that the United States now trails nearly all other industrialized nations on scales measuring educational equality

Economic inequality in black communities

- The black unemployment rate has consistently been twice as high as the white unemployment rate for 50 years - Annual unemployment rate for blacks is significantly higher than whites. 11.6% unemployment compared to 5.1% unemployment 6.7% difference during recessions since 1963 - The gap in household income between blacks and whites hasn't narrowed in the last 50 years - The wealth disparity between whites and blacks grew even wider during the great recession in 2008 - The black poverty rate is no longer declining - Black children are far more likely than whites to live in areas of concentrated poverty - Poor black neighborhoods also have environmental hazards that impact health (exposure to lead)

Proposed Cuts for Protecting the Environment

- The budget proposed cutting the E.P.A.'s funding by 31% - 70% cut in renewable energy research and the elimination of climate science programs across an array of agencies - That includes about $696 million for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which provides hundreds of millions of dollars in grants each year for research into electric vehicles, battery storage and building efficiency - At the E.P.A., the administration aims to cut a $66 million collection of voluntary climate-change-related partnerships known as the Atmospheric Protection Program that, among other things, helps businesses and local governments track planet warming greenhouse gas emissions. It also zeroed out $19 million that had been devoted to scientific research on climate change

Predatory Loans and Foreclosure Crisis

- The economic crisis that began in 2007 especially impacted communities of color - Segregation amplified the impact of the foreclosure crisis - Many more homes were in foreclosure in communities of color - Many more families of color experienced financial problems due to the foreclosure - This all negatively impacted wealth accumulation for families of color facing the challenges of the foreclosure crisis

Mortality, Race, and Education

- The education gradient is apparent within each race/ethnic group

SAT Test Scores Are Directly Related to Parental Income

- The gap in SAT scores between the lowest 10% and the highest 10% income groups is almost 400 points (1324 to 1722). For each $20,000 increase in family income there is an increase in student SAT scores

The Viel (Dubois)

- The literal darker skin of black people - White people's lack of clarity to see black people as true Americans - Black people's lack of clarity to see themselves outside of what White Americans prescribe to them

Coincidence? or Bad Timing

- This includes millions of dollars each for Representatives Vern Buchman (R-FL) and Diane Black (R-TN), who serve on the comittee that wrote the law. The day that Rep. Buchanan, who could get up to $2.1 million in annual tax cuts voted in favor of the tax cut bill, he rewarded himself with a multi-million-dollar yacht

Intergenerational Altruism

- Those with the means to do so can also escape estate taxes by setting up an irrevocable trust - An irrevocable trust provides parents with income during their lifetime and allows the wealth and its appreciation to be passed on to heirs without paying taxes

Trump's Tax Returns

- Trump refused to release his tax returns, so we can't know his exact savings. But he'll benefit greatly from the lower top individual tax rate, the lower corporate tax rate, and especially from the 20 percent deduction for "pass-through" business income (income from S corporations, partnerships, limited liability companies, and sole proprietorships that's taxed at the individual rather than the corporate level). - The Trump Organization, which is a collection of 500 pass-throughs, could save over $20 million a year from that deduction in the new tax law alone. And the law gifted Trump's industry real estate with a myriad of new loopholes

The Trump administration also came after the services that working families rely on

- Trump's budget, included a nearly 5% increase in military spending which is more than the Pentagon has asked for and an additional $8.6 billion for construction of a wall along the border with Mexico. it also contains what White House officials called a total of $1.9 trillion in "cost savings" from mandatory safety net programs, like Medicaid and Medicare, the federal health care programs for the elderly and the poor. Trump proposed spending $26 billion less on Social Security programs, the federal retirement program, including a $10 billion cut to the Social Security Disability Insurance program, which provides benefits to disabled workers - The budget proposal also contained hundreds of billions more in cuts to food assistance, income security, education, and more

Rising top incomes do not raise the tide

- Two economists, Sebastian Vollmer of the University of Gottingen and Dierk Herzer of Harvard, found in an analysis of nine high-income countries between 1961 and 1996 that "the greater the share of national income going to the top 10%, the slower the rate of economic growth - Why? because the dispersion of money is more concentrated. less supply and demand overall

Gini Coefficient

- Used to measure the spread of household incomes across all households. - Gini Coefficient = 0 when the Lorenz curve coincides with a perfect equality line/straight line - The further away from a straight light the greater the income distribution - 1975 Point of maximum equality/ lowest point on Gini index In 2015 the U.S. had a score of 0.45 In 2018 the U.S. had a score of 0.49

More on Theory of Fundamental Causes

- Why is there (still) a strong relationship between health outcomes and socioeconomic status? - Income and education (SES bring more resources - "Money, knowledge, prestige, power, and beneficial social connections" - Resources protect people from many different health problems, even as society and medicine change

W.E.B. Dubois's Veil of Double Consciousness

- idea that you can have two identities coexist at once - Gave a name to the feeling many black folks were experiencing during a time of extreme segregation and hate

Do High Taxes Limit Economic Growth?

- in 2012, Thomas Hungerford of the Congressional Research Service was asked to look at two competing theories: does cutting taxes on the wealthy boost the economy or simply make the rich richer and the poor poorer? - He looked at two taxes: the marginal tax rate and the capital gains tax - He found no relationship between cuts in the top marginal tax rate or in the top capital gains tax and economic growth

How much money is hidden offshore?

- it is impossible to say for sure, but estimates have ranged from $5.6 trillion to $32 trillion according to the ICIJ. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said the use of tax havens costs governments worldwide up to $600bn in lost taxes each year

False hegemony

- lead to the survival of some of the worst stocks of mankind

Impacts from COVID 19

- risk of serious illness if infected with coronavirus is higher for people with low household incomes - 10 Months into crisis, 660 billionaires see wealth rise 40% - December 9, 2020 update: US Billionaires Total Wealth Grows to $4 Trillion Over $1 Trillion since the beginning of the pandemic

Bush "Middle Class" Tax Cuts

-2/3 of tax benefits went to households in the top 5% of all earners (an average income of $203,740) - 1/3 of the tax benefits went to the top 1% of earners with an average income of $1.2 million - Taxpayers earning an average of $26 million pay the same as payers earning $200-500k - Obama wanted to extend tax cuts for all families making less than $250k (98% of all families), but return the tax rate for the wealthiest 2% back to pre 2001 levels (from 33% and 35% to 36% and 39.6%) - Instead, these cuts were made permanent and resulted in $5.6 trillion added to deficits from 2001 to 2018, that's 25% of the national debt owned by 2018

Two ways to think about mobility

Absolute mobility: compares the earnings of one generation to the next. There has been absolute mobility in most countries simply because the economy has grown - A 2012 study found that 84% of adult Americans had income higher than their parents Relative Mobility: whether someone moves up or down, relative to their parents

Glass-Stegal Act and Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

Glass-Stegal Act: of 1933 repealed in 1999 by the Graham-Leach-Blilely Act Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act: of 2010 with the Volcker Rule was gutted by the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act in 2018

Social Mobility in the U.S.

Harvard economist Raj Chetty and colleagues have shown that over the last 20-40 years mobility has slowed greatly in the United States - By income quintiles, we find that 70% of those born into the bottom quintile have never made it into the middle class, and only 10% have ever made it into the top quintile - 40% have remained poor over the course of their lifetimes - The middle-income group has lost economic strength as its relative size has declined over generations. The rich keep obtaining a larger share of the nation's wealth - For OECD Countries: The costs of essential parts of the middle-class lifestyle have increased faster than inflation - 1 in 6 current middle-income jobs are at high risk of automation

Institutional Outbreaks

Nursing homes - More than 77,000 dead Prisons: - 218,000 infections - 1,265 deaths Factories: - Smithfield meatpacking in S. Dakota (over 1000) - Tyson Foods pork, Waterloo, Iowa (over 1000) - Many others

Education Income Inequality

Parental education: is along with level of income, an equally important factor in whether or not children go on to college and succeed - So is getting married to another college graduate - The income gap between a family with two college graduates and one with two high school graduates grew by $30,000 between 1979 and 2012, adjusting for inflation (Goldin and Lawrence, 2010)

Sources of COVID-19 Disparities

Physically concentrated: - Nursing homes, factories, prisons Health Status - Respiratory disease, affects those who have e.g. asthma, high blood pressure, compromised immunity Exposed workers: - Healthcare workers - Service workers - Workers who can't stay home, or can't work at home

Prejudice vs Discrimination

Prejudice: a negative or hostile attitude/belief towards a person or persons who belong to a specific group that is thought to be objectionable Discrimination: the unfair treatment (an act or behavior) directed at another person (S)

collective bargaining

Process by which a union representing a group of workers negotiates contracts with their employers to determine their terms of employment, including pay, benefits, hours, leave, job health and safety policies, ways to balance work and families

Railway Labor Act of 1926

Protected unionization rights: allowed for 90-day cooling off period to prevent strikes in national emergencies. Covers railroads and unions Agricultural employees, domestic employees could not join labor unions

Segregation, Racial Covenants, and Racial Steering

Segregation: violence committed by whites toward blacks in the northern part of the United States included cross-burning, vandalism, and attacks by large crowds Racial Covenants: these were written agreements from the 1930s to the 1960s that homeowners signed upon moving to a new home in which they agreed not to sell the home to a person of color Racial Steering: a potential homeowner would only be shown homes by real estate agents in neighborhoods that matched the homeowner's race

The US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission reported findings in Janurary 2011

The crisis was avoidable and was caused by: - Widespread failures in financial regulation, including the Federal Reserve's failure to stem the tide of toxic mortgages - dramatic breakdowns in corporate governance including too many financial firms acting recklessly and taking on too much risk - An explosive mix of excessive borrowing and risk by households and wall street that put the financial system on a collision course with crisis - Key policy makers ill prepared for the crisis, lacking a full understanding of the financial system they oversaw - and systemic breaches in accountability and ethics at all levels

collective action

is any form of the organized social or political act carried about by a group of people in order to address their needs