Race problems
Segregation by race and income in the United States 1970-2010
Jake Intrator, Jonathan Tannen & Douglas Massey
Social Science Research, November 2016, Pages 45-60
Abstract:
A systematic analysis of residential segregation and spatial interaction by income reveals that as income rises, minority access to integrated neighborhoods, higher levels of interaction with whites, and more affluent neighbors also increase. However, the income payoffs are much lower for African Americans than other groups, especially Asians. Although Hispanics and Asians have always displayed declining levels of minority-white dissimilarity and rising levels of minority-white interaction with rising income, income differentials on these outcomes for blacks did not appear until 1990 and since then have improved at a very slow pace. Given their higher overall levels of segregation and income's limited effect on residential attainment, African Americans experience less integration, more neighborhood poverty at all levels of income compared to other minority groups. The degree of black spatial disadvantage is especially acute in the nation's 21 hypersegregated metropolitan areas.
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The Race Gap in Wait Times: Why Minority Precincts are Underserved by Local Election Officials
Stephen Pettigrew
Political Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper I demonstrate that voting precincts in mostly minority neighborhoods have an average wait time that is twice as long as the wait in a mostly white neighborhood. Minority voters are also six times more likely than whites to wait longer than 60 minutes to vote. I show that most of this racial gap can be explained by how local election officials handle white and non-white precincts differently. The biggest of these differences is that, within an election administration jurisdiction (either county or town), white precincts tend to receive more resources - like voting machines and poll workers - per voter than minority ones. White precincts tend to have 20 fewer voters per voting machine and 90 fewer voters per poll worker than minority precincts. The findings of this paper suggest way forward for improving the voting experience for the 3.5 million voters who waited more than an hour in 2012.
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Far From Fairness: Prejudice, Skin Color, and Psychological Functioning in Asian Americans
Alisia Tran et al.
Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, forthcoming
Objectives: We explored the moderating role of observed skin color in the association between prejudice and concurrent and lagged psychological functioning (i.e., depression, ingroup/outgroup psychological connectedness). We further aimed to understand gender differences in these processes.
Method: Data from 821 Asian American undergraduate students (57.5% female and 42.5% male) were drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshman. Cross-sectional and longitudinal regression-based moderation models were conducted with PROCESS 2.13 for SPSS.
Results: Lighter skin color nullified the association between prejudice and recent depression for Asian American females. This moderating effect did not hold over time with regards to depression symptoms 1 year later. Additionally, prejudice predicted psychological distance to other Asian students 1 year later among females rated as lighter in skin color, whereas prejudice was tied to psychological closeness for females with darker skin ratings.
Conclusions: Results highlight skin color as a pertinent factor relevant to the short-term and long-term mental health and social experiences of Asian American women in particular.
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Jordan Leitner et al.
Psychological Science, October 2016, Pages 1299-1311
Abstract:
Perceptions of racial bias have been linked to poorer circulatory health among Blacks compared with Whites. However, little is known about whether Whites' actual racial bias contributes to this racial disparity in health. We compiled racial-bias data from 1,391,632 Whites and examined whether racial bias in a given county predicted Black-White disparities in circulatory-disease risk (access to health care, diagnosis of a circulatory disease; Study 1) and circulatory-disease-related death rate (Study 2) in the same county. Results revealed that in counties where Whites reported greater racial bias, Blacks (but not Whites) reported decreased access to health care (Study 1). Furthermore, in counties where Whites reported greater racial bias, both Blacks and Whites showed increased death rates due to circulatory diseases, but this relationship was stronger for Blacks than for Whites (Study 2). These results indicate that racial disparities in risk of circulatory disease and in circulatory-disease-related death rate are more pronounced in communities where Whites harbor more explicit racial bias.
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Jordan Leitner et al.
Social Science & Medicine, December 2016, Pages 220-227
Method: We compiled racial bias responses from 250,665 Blacks and 1,391,632 Whites to generate county-level estimates of Blacks' and Whites' implicit and explicit biases towards each other. We then examined the degree to which these biases predicted ingroup death rate from circulatory-related diseases.
Results: In counties where Blacks harbored more implicit bias towards Whites, Blacks died at a higher rate. Additionally, consistent with previous research, in counties where Whites harbored more explicit bias towards Blacks, Whites died at a higher rate. These links between racial bias and ingroup death rate were independent of county-level socio-demographic characteristics, and racial biases from the outgroup in the same county.
Conclusion: Findings indicate that racial bias is related to negative ingroup health outcomes for both Blacks and Whites, though this relationship is driven by implicit bias for Blacks, and explicit bias for Whites.
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Richelle Winkler & Kenneth Johnson
Demography, August 2016, Pages 1027-1049
Abstract:
This study analyzes the impact of migration on ethnoracial segregation among U.S. counties. Using county-level net migration estimates by age, race, and Hispanic origin from 1990-2000 and 2000-2010, we estimate migration's impact on segregation by age and across space. Overall, migration served to integrate ethnoracial groups in both decades, whereas differences in natural population change (increase/decrease) would have increased segregation. Age differences, however, are stark. Net migration of the population under age 40 reduced segregation, while net migration of people over age 60 further segregated people. Migration up and down the rural-urban continuum (including suburbanization among people of color) did most to decrease segregation, while interregional migration had only a small impact. People of color tended to move toward more predominantly white counties and regions at all ages. Migration among white young adults (aged 20-39) also decreased segregation. Whites aged 40 and older, however, showed tendencies toward white flight. Moderate spatial variation suggests that segregation is diminishing the most in suburban and fringe areas of several metropolitan areas in the Northeast and Midwest, while parts of the South, Southwest, and Appalachia show little evidence of integration.
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Reconsidering residential mobility: Differential effects on child wellbeing by race and ethnicity
Kristin Perkins
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Residential mobility is a common experience among Americans, especially children. Most previous research finds residential mobility has negative effects on children's educational attainment, delinquency, substance abuse, and physical and mental health. Previous research, however, does not fully explore whether the effect of mobility differs by child race/ethnicity, in part because many of the samples used for these studies were majority white or exclusively non-white or disadvantaged. In addition, previous research rarely fully accounts for factors that predict selection into mobility and that may also be related to the outcome of interest. This study simultaneously addresses both of these limitations by estimating the effect of moving homes on children's emotional and behavioral wellbeing using first difference models and a diverse longitudinal sample from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. I find that, after controlling for a wide range of individual, caregiver, household and neighborhood characteristics, the effects of moving among African American and Latino children are significantly worse than among white children.
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Symbolic Racism, Institutional Bias, and Welfare Drug Testing Legislation: Racial Biases Matter
Chris Ledford
Policy Studies Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Since the devolution of welfare policymaking to the states after the passage of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, there has been contentious debate about drug testing welfare applicants. Beyond elite rhetoric and debate points about the implications of welfare drug testing, extant research remains limited insofar as providing theoretical understanding about what factors influence state proposal of legislation requiring welfare applicants to submit to drug tests. I develop and test expectations that derive from research on welfare attitudes, social construction theory, and policy design - specifically, hypotheses that the proportion of blacks on state temporary assistance for needy families caseloads, as well as state-aggregate levels of symbolic racism, significantly influence state proposal of drug testing legislation. My multilevel analysis of every state proposal of welfare drug testing legislation from 2008 to 2014 yields strong evidence in support of these hypotheses and paints a more complete picture of the influence of racial attitudes on state welfare policymaking. Specifically, while much research finds evidence of institutional racial biases in the implementation of welfare policy, the evidence presented herein shows that these biases, as well as public biases, influence policymaking at the proposal stage. Implications of these findings are discussed in light of recent significant electoral gains made by Republicans in state legislatures.
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Christopher Jones et al.
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, forthcoming
Background: Health disparities begin early in life and persist across the life course. Despite current efforts Black women exhibit greater risk for pregnancy complications and negative perinatal outcomes compared to White women. The placenta, a complex multi-tissue organ, serves as the primary transducer of bidirectional information between the mother and fetus. Altered placental function is linked to multiple racially disparate pregnancy complications, however little is known about racial differences in molecular factors within the placenta. Several pregnancy complications, including preeclampsia and fetal growth restriction, exhibit racial disparities and are associated with shorter placental telomere length, an indicator of cellular stress and aging. Cellular senescence and telomere dynamics are linked to the molecular mechanisms associated with the onset of labor and parturition. Further, racial differences in telomere length are found in a range of different peripheral tissues. Together these factors suggest that exploration of racial differences in telomere length of the placenta may provide novel mechanistic insight into racial disparities in birth outcomes.
Study Design: In a prospective study, placental tissue samples were collected from the amnion, chorion, villus, and umbilical cord from Black and White singleton pregnancies (N=46). Telomere length was determined using monochrome multiplex quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction in each placental tissue. Demographic and pregnancy-related data were also collected. Descriptive statistics characterized the sample overall and among Black and White women separately. The overall impact of race was assessed by multilevel mixed-effects linear regression models that included empirically relevant covariates.
Results: Telomere length was significantly correlated across all placental tissues. Pairwise analyses of placental tissue telomere length revealed significantly longer telomere length in the amnion compared to the chorion (t=-2.06, p=0.043). Overall telomere length measured in placenta samples from Black mothers were significantly shorter than those from White mothers (β=-0.09, p=0.04). Controlling for relevant maternal and infant characteristics strengthened the significance of the observed racial differences (β=-0.12, p=0.02). Within tissue analyses revealed that the greatest difference by race was found in chorionic telomere length (t=-2.81, p=0.007).
Conclusion: These findings provide the first evidence of racial differences in placental telomere length. Telomere length was significantly shorter in placental samples derived from Black mothers compared to White. Given previous studies reporting that telomere length, cellular senescence, and telomere dynamics are molecular factors contributing to the rupture of the amniotic sac, onset of labor, and parturition, our findings of shorter telomere length in placentas from Black mothers suggests that accelerated cellular aging across placental tissues may be relevant to the increased risk of preterm delivery in Blacks. Our results suggest that racial differences in cellular aging in the placenta contribute to the earliest roots of health disparities.
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Catherine Kothari et al.
SSM - Population Health, December 2016, Pages 859-867
Abstract:
This study examined the interrelationship of race and socioeconomic status (SES) upon infant birthweight at the individual and neighborhood levels within a Midwestern US county marked by high Black infant mortality. The study conducted a multi-level analysis utilizing individual birth records and census tract datasets from 2010, linked through a spatial join with ArcGIS 10.0. The maternal population of 2,861 Black and White women delivering infants in 2010, residing in 57 census tracts within the county, constituted the study samples. The main outcome was infant birthweight. The predictors, race and SES were dichotomized into Black and White, low-SES and higher-SES, at both the individual and census tract levels. A two-part Bayesian model demonstrated that individual-level race and SES were more influential birthweight predictors than community-level factors. Specifically, Black women had 1.6 higher odds of delivering a low birthweight (LBW) infant than White women, and low-SES women had 1.7 higher odds of delivering a LBW infant than higher-SES women. Moderate support was found for a three-way interaction between individual-level race, SES and community-level race, such that Black women achieved equity with White women (4.0% Black LBW and 4.1% White LBW) when they each had higher-SES and lived in a racially congruous neighborhood (e.g., Black women lived in disproportionately Black neighborhood and White women lived in disproportionately White neighborhood). In sharp contrast, Black women with higher-SES who lived in a racially incongruous neighborhood (e.g., disproportionately White) had the worst outcomes (14.5% LBW). Demonstrating the layered influence of personal and community circumstances upon health, in a community with substantial racial disparities, personal race and SES independently contribute to birth outcomes, while environmental context, specifically neighborhood racial congruity, is associated with mitigated health risk.
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Gregory Burge & Arthur Zillante
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Objective: While previous studies document racial discrimination in Major League Baseball, few have considered statistical discrimination, and how racial bias may spill over into related markets. Investigating rookie card (RC) values at their initial release, we exploit the role of information uncertainty to separately identify the influence of racial discrimination and statistical discrimination.
Methods: Using ordinary least squares (OLS) and Tobit models, we examine 6,026 cards released from 1986 to 1993. After documenting race-based differentials in MLB achievement, we explore the determinants of prices in certain and uncertain environments.
Results: RCs of black players carry a 14-20 percent premium at their initial release. Race does not influence card values once careers are finished. Finally, given comparable career performance, prices for black players decline significantly more over time. Collectively, this suggests statistical discrimination influences consumers in this market.
Conclusion: Racial discrimination in an upstream market can lead to spillover effects on related downstream markets.
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James Elliott & Junia Howell
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study investigates the unequal impact of natural hazard damage on people's residential instability over time by shifting analyses from an event-centered design common in disaster studies to a longitudinal, population-centered approach. To demonstrate this approach, we link annual data on property damages from natural hazards at the county level to geocoded data on nationally representative samples of men and women from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Results indicate that the average US household lives in a county that experiences five documented hazards per year, totaling $20 million in direct property damage. Findings also indicate that as local damages accrue over time, so does residential instability, net of other factors. This pattern is particularly strong for Black and Latina women, for whom measurable differences in personal and social resources interact with hazard damages to significantly increase residential instability over time.