Entries associated with the tag "Sociology":

Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow evidently has the data and he's not afraid to use it. From his new book After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion:

"...unless religious leaders take younger adults more seriously, the future of American religion is in doubt.... Younger adults are already less actively involved in their congregations than older adults are. Not only this, younger adults are currently less involved than younger adults were a generation ago. The demographics behind this declining involvement also do not bode well for the future. Religious involvement is influenced more by whether people are married, when they get married, whether they have children, and how many children they have than almost anything else. Religious involvement is also shaped by how committed people are to their careers and to their communities. All of these social factors have been changing."

Most of the reviews and blog commentary that I've seen is a direct reaction to this, usually from people who find it worrisome. But as a recovering sociology major, I also enjoyed Wuthnow's takedowns of popular and journalistic thinking about generations:

"...there is simply no evidence that younger adults currently have been decisively shaped by a particular historical event in the same way that the baby boomers were by the Vietnam war or by their parents waiting until after World War II to marry and have children... The other reason for being skeptical of generational language is that popular usages of it strain to draw contrasts with baby boomers, but in doing so are misleading. For instance, one reads in the popular literature that the millennial generation is supposedly defined by an interest in small fellowship groups that meet for prayer and Bible study during the week at churches or in homes. But precisely the same argument was made about baby boomers and, in fact, research has shown that baby boomers did gravitate to these groups." 

Read the whole first chapter here. Wuthnow's own data groupings pay even less respect to the "boomer" vs. Gen X rhetoric. Usually he compares people born between 1953 and 1981 ("younger adults who were between the ages of 21 and 45 in the years from about 1998 to 2002") with those born 1927-1955.

More than one blog commenting on this links to a recent David Brooks column. Not having read the book yet, I'm not sure Wuthnow would care for the association. It's also been reviewed in Christian Century .

When the male-female wage gap shrinks, do women become better-respected bargainers on household issues? Or do their male partners feel threatened and start hitting them?

As is often the case in social science, "common sense" says both things. Brown University economist Anna Aizer used improved measures of pay (relative to local standards) and of violence (hospital reports rather than self-reports), and found that the improved-bargaining model fits the facts better. "The improvement in labor market conditions faced by women over the period 1990-2003 explains ten percent of the decline in violence against women over this period." (Abstract here -- California data in both cases.)

“From time to time, most people discuss important matters with other people.  Looking back over the last six months--who are the people with whom you discussed matters important to you?”

The General Social Survey, a project of the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center, asked that question in 1985 and again in 2004. The results were surprising.

(FYI, this isn’t just any poll. The GSS is the gold standard of impartial public opinion research, conducted face-to-face with a random sample of 3,000 Americans every other year. It's been a model of caution and care in tracking public opinion on general subjects since 1972, and on some subjects well before that. More.)

Twenty years ago the average person had a “network” of three people with whom he or she could talk over important matters. Now it’s down to two, and those two are more likely than before to be family members, rather than neighbors or coworkers. In 1985 about 10 percent said they had nobody to talk to; now it’s 25 percent.

Miller McPherson of the University of Arizona and two other sociologists report the findings in the American Sociological Review. Money quote:

“In his groundbreaking [1982] study of social networks, To Dwell Among Friends, Claude Fischer labeled those who had only one or no discussion ties with whom to discuss personal matters as having marginal or inadequate counseling support. By those criteria, we have gone from a quarter of the American population being isolated from counseling support to almost half of the population falling into that category.”

No one study is conclusive but this is a solid piece of evidence that’s pretty hard to spin as good news. Unlike many GSS questions, this one hasn’t been asked in every survey, so there aren’t as many data points as one would like. And perhaps most people define “important” differently now than before, though I know of no evidence for this.

According to Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber, this is the best media summary. Discussion here and a determinedly skeptical take here. Gross overstatement here that's well answered here.