Charles M. Tolbert

Industrial Segmentation and Labor Market Discrimination.

The economic segmentation literature suggests two mechanisms by which the inferior position of minority within the socioeconomic structure of industrial capitalism is perpetuated. The first is the differential allocation of minority labor to different segments of the industrial economy, and the second is the differential evaluation of minority credentials within different industrial segments. Using data from the 1976 Current Population Survey we evaluate each of these two mechanisms. We find that while there are significant earnings costs due to the differential allocation of minority labor into the labor-intensive sector of the economy, the dollar costs of the differential evaluation of minority credentials are far greater. This is especially apparent in the capital-intensive sector where the penalties paid by minorities are substantial, especially for white females but also for nonwhites of either sex.

There's No Place like Home: Nonmigration and Civic Engagement

Demographic stability in local areas is achieved by maintaining a population core that does not move. However, relatively little is known about contextual factors related to nonmigration. What research exists on nonmigration suggests that the factors anchoring people to places may be different than the factors that are primary determinants of migration. In this paper we discuss the social foundations that anchor people to places and present an analysis that demonstrates an interrelationship between community social institutions and nonmigration. Specifically, we show that the proportion of persons remaining between 1985 and 1990 in 3024 US counties varies directly with the number of locally owned small-scale retail establishments, the number of small-scale manufacturing firms and family farms, the number of local civic associations, and the proportion of the local population in civically active religious denominations.

Why People Stay: The Impact of Community Context on Nonmigration in the USA

La plupart des travaux sur les migrations americaines reposent sur des explications de la mobilite au niveau individuel. Notre etude va plus loin en examinant l’effet du contexte local sur les probabilites de ne pas migrer entre 1985 et 1990. En utilisant les donnees individuelles extraites des bulletins complets du recensement de 1990, nous rattachons les adultes recenses en 1990 a leur comte de residence en 1985. Ensuite, en exploitant les caracteristiques macro-structurelles des comtes d’origine (fournies par le recensement de l’economie) et les caracteristiques des individus (fournies par le recensement decennal), nous elaborons un modele lineaire hierarchique a deux niveaux. Au niveau 1, nous construisons une equation logistique qui modelise les probabilites individuelles de ne pas migrer. Au niveau 2, nous modelisons d’abord les effets contextuels additifs de la localite d’origine sur ces probabilites, puis les effets d’interaction (inter-niveaux). Les facteurs locaux se classent en deux categories : 1) la situation economique, qui comprend les habituels facteurs « repulsifs » au niveau agrege; 2) les caracteristiques de la collectivite locale qui tendent a retenir les gens la ou ils vivent. Les resultats precisent le lien qui existe entre le contexte local et les migrations individuelles et montrent les effets des structures economiques et sociales locales sur ces comportements individuels. Nous constatons que, une fois controles les facteurs economiques locaux et les caracteristiques individuelles, les particularites sociologiques des localites sont associees sur un mode additif a la propension a rester ou l’on est. De plus, nous observons que certaines caracteristiques des communautes locales interagissent avec les caracteristiques individuelles et familiales pour conditionner les effets des facteurs individuels sur la probabilite de migrer.

High Technology, Work, and Inequality in Southern Labor Markets.

The relationship among high-technology industrialization, skill levels, and economic inequality is the subject of considerable controversy among social scientists and policymakers. We explore these relationships in this article, drawing on classic post-industrial, skill upgrading, and deskilling debates. Using several types of local labor markets in the South, we compare high-tech workers to other workers with respect to industrial, occupational, and earnings distributions. Our findings suggest that much of the conflicting evidence is due to differences in definitions of high technology and to the local labor market context in which high-tech industries are located. The earnings distributions of some high-tech workers exhibit considerable inequality and suggest that deskilling may be occurring. Other high-tech workers have more equal earnings distributions that may be a product of skill upgrading. We also find that minority labor force participants—women and blacks—experience more earnings discrimination in high-tech industries than in other industries. We attribute these findings to variations in local labor market contexts and to the widely differing stages of product cycles that high-tech encompasses.

From Obama to Osama: Image of God and Trust in Muslims among the Highly Religious in the United States

Abstract Although Muslims in the United States are highly assimilated into American society, they represent less than 1 percent of the total population. Therefore, most of the information Americans receive about this group comes from secondary sources. Two theoretical perspectives of opinion formation—image of God and low information rationality—shed light on the subject of trust in this marginalized group. For highly religious Americans, nearly two-thirds of the 2005 Baylor Religion Surveys national sample, Muslims may represent the ultimate outsiders. We compare the effect of the central religious narrative, or an image of God as creator or judge, to the effect of political ideology, or the likely exposure to forms of low information rationality such as framing, spinning, and buzzwords. We use indicators of these concepts in a multivariate analysis of trust in Muslims as a test of these competing perspectives of opinion formation. Using the 2005 Baylor Religion Survey data, we find that not only does trust in Muslims decrease with both a more conservative political ideology and a stronger view of God as vengeful and angry but that these effects interact to produce individuals who are far less likely to trust Muslims compared to their Democrat, Independent, and “loving God” counterparts.

Pourquoi certains ne migrent pas :. L'impact du contexte local sur la sédentarité aux États-Unis

La plupart des travaux sur les migrations americaines reposent sur des explications de la mobilite au niveau individuel. Notre etude va plus loin en examinant l’effet du contexte local sur les probabilites de ne pas migrer entre 1985 et 1990. En utilisant les donnees individuelles extraites des bulletins complets du recensement de 1990, nous rattachons les adultes recenses en 1990 a leur comte de residence en 1985. Ensuite, en exploitant les caracteristiques macro-structurelles des comtes d’origine (fournies par le recensement de l’economie) et les caracteristiques des individus (fournies par le recensement decennal), nous elaborons un modele lineaire hierarchique a deux niveaux. Au niveau 1, nous construisons une equation logistique qui modelise les probabilites individuelles de ne pas migrer. Au niveau 2, nous modelisons d’abord les effets contextuels additifs de la localite d’origine sur ces probabilites, puis les effets d’interaction (inter-niveaux). Les facteurs locaux se classent en deux categories : 1) la situation economique, qui comprend les habituels facteurs « repulsifs » au niveau agrege ; 2) les caracteristiques de la collectivite locale qui tendent a retenir les gens la ou ils vivent. Les resultats precisent le lien qui existe entre le contexte local et les migrations individuelles et montrent les effets des structures economiques et sociales locales sur ces comportements individuels. Nous constatons que, une fois controles les facteurs economiques locaux et les caracteristiques individuelles, les particularites sociologiques des localites exercent des effets additifs sur la propension a rester ou l’on est. De plus, nous observons que certaines caracteristiques des communautes locales interagissent avec les caracteristiques individuelles et familiales pour conditionner les effets des facteurs individuels sur la probabilite de migrer.

Entrepreneurial Environment and the Prevalence of Diabetes in U.S. Counities

Objective. To examine whether the presence of an entrepreneurial culture in a community is associated with county-level diabetes prevalence in the U.S. after accounting for high level of spatial clustering of prevalence rates observed in prior research. Methods. We perform a county-level spatial regression analysis of CDC diabetes prevalence rates. We measure entrepreneurial culture as the number of businesses with 0 to 4 employees per 1,000 residents. Results. The level of entrepreneurial culture in a community is associated with lower rates of diabetes. Our findings show that the key measure of entrepreneurial culture has expected effects on county diabetes rates. However, we show that failure to control for spatial error dependence in previous research leads to an overestimation of the effects of entrepreneurial culture on diabetes prevalence. Conclusion. Policies aimed at curbing diabetes prevalence should utilize the business community as a key agent of social change. Researchers should also utilize spatial regression techniques when analyzing county-level diabetes prevalence rates, because of high level of spatial clustering of rates.

Georeferencing School-Age Population Projections: Methodology for a Rapidly Growing District

Schools and other public service providers often require detailed information about local populations to accommodate geographically specific population growth and decline with necessary resources. Faced with relentless middle-class population growth, the Ascension Parish School District requires fine-grained population projections of its school enrollment to ensure sufficient facilities and balanced attendance zones in coming years. In this paper we outline the method we created to integrate standard projected population values with GIS to forecast any number of sub-parish population settlement geographies. With this approach, Ascension Parish School District is able to locate future school facilities and easily negotiate multiple possible attendance zone boundaries by systematically disaggregating and recombining standard population projections through GIS.

Transformations of High-Tech Labor Markets and Socioeconomic Inequalities

Abstract In this paper we examine the reorganization of work in labor markets dominated by the presence of high-technology industries from 1980 to 1990. Using Public Use Microdata Samples, we identify trends in spatial, industrial, occupational, gender, and racial divisions of labor and their effects on earnings inequality. Patterns in these changing work structures are linked to both general and specific theories of labor market development, structures, and processes. We find that centers of high-tech employment exhibit varied patterns of agglomeration, decline, and dispersion over the decade. Moreover, industrial and occupational divisions embedded within these high-tech spaces show variation across labor market areas as well. We identify some general trends, including the increasing dominance of upper-tier workers (professional, technical, and managerial) across most high-tech areas and the effects of Reagans defense-related policies in the generation of new high-tech areas in certain locales. An analysis of the processes of earnings generation in high-tech labor markets reinforces the importance of divisions or segmentation of labor for understanding earnings inequality and its embeddedness in specific labor market contexts.

The Significance of SPSS/PC

&dquo;Say, did you see that they now have SPSS for microcomputers?&dquo; Colleague after colleague approaches these days with just that question, enthusiastically implying that the microcomputer has suddenly come of age. It is abundantly clear that the mere announcement of SPss/pc has done a great deal to promote the use of small computers. Indeed, the immediate significance of spsslpc lies in its legitimation of microcomputers in social research. Like the IBM Personal Computer, SPSS/PC has all the advantages of a huge user community, tradition, and extraordinary name recognition. But also like the !BM PC, SPSS/PC is a conservative and expensive approach to personal computing. Before investing in necessary hardware and software, microcomputer users would do well to consider some of the points below.