Bradley R. E. Wright

Low socioeconomic status and mental disorders : A longitudinal study of selection and causation during young adulthood

This article examines low socioeconomic staus (SES) as both a cause and a consequence of mental illnesses by investigating the mutual influence of mental disorders and educational attainment, a core element of SES. The analyses are based on a longitudinal panel design and focus on four disorders: anxiety, depression, antisocial disorder, and attention deficit disorder. The article shows that each disorder has a unique relationship with SES, highlighting the need for greater consideration of antisocial disorders in the status attainment process and for further theoretical development in the sociology of mental disorders to account for disorder‐specific relations with SES.

Early failure in the labor market : Childhood and adolescent predictors of unemployment in the transition to adulthood

The authors investigate the childhood and adolescent predictors of youth unemployment in a longitudinal study of young adults who have been studied for the 21 years since their births in 1972-1973. They test hypotheses about the predictors of youth unemployment using information about each individuals human capital, social capital, and personal capital. In the human capital domain, lack of high-school qualifications, poor reading skills, low IQ scores, and limited parental resources significantly increased the risk of unemployment. In the social capital domain, growing up in a single-parent family, family conflict, and lack of attachment to school also increased the risk of unemployment. In the personal capital domain, children involved in antisocial behavior had an increased risk of unemployment. These predictors of unemployment reached back to early childhood, suggesting that they began to shape labor-market outcomes years before these youths entered the work force. In addition, these effects remained significant after controlling for the duration of education and educational attainment, suggesting that many early personal and family characteristics affect labor-market outcomes, not only because they restrict the accumulation of human capital (e.g., education), but also because they directly affect labor-market behaviors. Failure to account for prior social, psychological, and economic risk factors may lead to inflated estimates of the effects of unemployment on future outcomes

Does the Perceived Risk of Punishment Deter Criminally Prone Individuals? Rational Choice, Self-Control, and Crime

Society’s efforts to deter crime with punishment may be ineffective because those individuals most prone to commit crime often act impulsively, with little thought for the future, and so they may be unmoved by the threat of later punishment. Deterrence messages they receive, therefore, may fall on deaf ears. This article examines this issue by testing the relationship between criminal propensity, perceived risks and costs of punishment, and criminal behavior. The authors analyzed data from the Dunedin (New Zealand) Study, a longitudinal study of individuals from birth through age26(N = 1,002). They found that in fact, deterrence perceptions had their greatest impact on criminally prone study members.

Exits from and Returns to Homelessness

This study explores transitions between homeless and domiciled states. It describes the timing of departures from and returns to homelessness, and it tests theoretical propositions linking individual attributes and experiences to these transitions. Four theoretical frameworks guide the analyses: institutional disaffiliation, human capital deficiencies, personal disabilities, and acculturation. The data come from a longitudinal study of homeless individuals in Minneapolis. Various individual attributes are linked with leaving homelessness, including recent employment, welfare receipt, job training, identification with other homeless people, and homeless history. Fewer attributes are linked with returns to homelessness: work history and gender. These findings provide some evidence for existing explanations for homeless transitions, and they suggest promising avenues for further research on the dynamics of homelessness.

Transitions from and Returns to Out-of-Home Care

This longitudinal study employs bivariate probit regression analysis to examine factors associated with returns home from, and reentry to, out-of-home care for 21,484 children placed by child welfare authorities in California. A central focus of the study is to determine the degree to which phenomena unaccounted for in analyses of the returns home from care are correlated with factors unaccounted for in analyses of the process of reentry to care. Although a previous analysis implies direct effects of race and age on foster care reentry, current results suggest that these effects are mediated by other factors. A second concern of the study led to the finding that Aid to Families with Dependent Children eligibility is associated with delays in the return home of children initially placed in kinship foster care.

Factors Associated with Doubled‐Up Housing—a Common Precursor to Homelessness

Previous research on housing problems has concentrated on the more visible homeless‐ness rather than more intermediate forms of housing problems such as doubled‐up housing. This article expands this research by analyzing entrance into doubled‐up housing among a sample of adolescents. This common type of vulnerable housing has been linked to various social and psychological problems. It commonly precedes homeless‐ness, and it potentially increases the risk of homelessness. We find that doubled‐up housing frequently occurs during young adulthood and is predicted by insufficient human capital, broken social ties, and personal disabilities.

Self-Control and Criminal Career Dimensions:

The criminal career paradigm parcels offenders’ careers into multiple dimensions, including participation, frequency, persistence, seriousness, career length, and desistance, and each dimension may have different causes. In a forceful critique of this perspective, Gottfredson and Hirschi claim that low self-control equally predicts all dimensions of criminal behavior and that its effect holds steady across types of people, including both men and women. This study examines the link between low self-control and the career dimensions of participation, frequency, persistence, and desistance from crime. Analyses also investigate whether self-control distinguishes between persistence and desistance. Using data from 985 participants in the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Human Development Study, the authors found overall support for Gottfredson and Hirschi’s position.

Religious Affiliation and Hiring Discrimination in the American South: A Field Experiment

This article describes a field experiment in which we sent fictitious résumés to advertised job openings throughout the American South. We randomly altered the résumés to indicate affiliation in one of seven religious groups or a control group. We found that applicants who expressed a religious identity were 26 percent less likely to receive a response from employers. In general, Muslims, pagans, and atheists suffered the highest levels of discriminatory treatment from employers, a fictitious religious group and Catholics experienced moderate levels, evangelical Christians encountered little, and Jews received no discernible discrimination. We also found evidence suggesting the possibility that Jews received preferential treatment over other religious groups in employer responses. The results fit best with models of religious discrimination rooted in secularization theory and cultural distaste theory. We briefly discuss what our findings suggest for a more robust theory of prejudice and discrimination in society.

Reconsidering the Relationship between Race and Crime Positive and Negative Predictors of Crime among African American Youth

Studies of race and crime have emphasized the effects of social disadvantage and discrimination on increasing crime among African Americans. The authors extend this literature by examining various beliefs and institutions that have developed within African American communities that, in contrast, decrease criminal behavior. A model of cross-canceling, indirect effects between race and crime was developed and tested with data from the National Youth Survey. The results demonstrate that some factors, such as single-parent families, lowered educational attainment, and crime-ridden neighborhoods, increase criminal behavior among African American respondents relative to Whites. However, other factors, such as increased religiosity, strong family ties, and lowered alcohol consumption, decrease crime. These findings highlight the complex effects of race on crime.

A New Approach for Studying Stratification and Religion: Early Results from a National Internet-Based Field Experiment study of U.S. Churches

Purpose – In this chapter, we introduce the Internet-based field experiment (IBFE) that offers numerous advantages for bringing stratification processes “back into” the study of religion. We present preliminary results from a study of class and race discrimination using this approach. Design/Methodology/Approach – Using names of fictitious characters, we sent e-mails to a nationally representative sample of 4,680 U.S. Christian churches asking about possible membership. The e-mails varied only in the perceived race and class of the senders. We utilize a mixed methods approach to analyze variation in the content of the church responses. Findings – Our early findings suggest significant variation by race/class manipulation, religious denomination, and region of the country in churches’ responses as well as the length of time they took to reply, the length of the response, the warmth, religious tone, and several other dimensions. Research limitations/Implications – This study raises new opportunities for Internet-based research on religion in a variety of social settings, but there is not yet a well-established set of “dos” and “don’ts” for how to proceed. We advocate the development of a protocol of best practices as this research method develops. Originality/Value – This study demonstrates the opportunities and pitfalls of the IBFE and the advantages it provides for studies of stratification and religion. Ours is the first study to apply this emerging method to the study of religion and stratification.