Christopher Muller

Mass Incarceration, Macrosociology, and the Poor

The U.S. prison and jail population has grown fivefold in the 40 years since the early 1970s. The aggregate consequences of the growth in the penal system are widely claimed but have not been closely studied. We survey evidence for the aggregate relationship among the incarceration rate, employment rates, single-parenthood, public opinion, and crime. Employment among very low-skilled men has declined with rising incarceration. Punitive sentiment in public opinion has also softened as imprisonment increased. Single-parenthood and crime rates, however, are not systematically related to incarceration. We conclude with a discussion of the conceptual and empirical challenges that come with assessing the aggregate effects of mass incarceration on American poverty.

Mass Imprisonment and Trust in the Law

This article examines the relationship between two facets of mass imprisonment—its novel comparative and historical scale and its pervasiveness in the lives of African Americans—and surveys respondents’ beliefs about the harshness of the courts, and bias in the courts or among police. Analyses of national survey data show that as states’ incarceration rates increased, so too did the probability that residents believed that courts were too harsh. However, while white Americans’ opinions about the courts were sensitive to changes in the white incarceration rate, African Americans’ opinions were not sensitive to changes in the African American incarceration rate. African American respondents who had been to prison or who had a close friend or family member who had been to prison were more likely to attribute racial disparities in incarceration to police bias and bias in the courts. The article concludes with a discussion of the possible consequences of declining trust in the law for the future of American punishment.

Geographic Variation in the Cumulative Risk of Imprisonment and Parental Imprisonment in the United States

This article reports estimates of the cumulative risk of imprisonment and parental imprisonment for demographic groups in four regions and four states. Regional and state-level cumulative risks were markedly higher for African Americans and Latinos than for whites. African Americans faced the highest cumulative risks of imprisonment in the Midwest, Northeast, and two southern states. Latinos were most likely to serve time in state prison in the West, where their cumulative risk was comparable to that of African Americans. Latino children had a relatively high risk of having a parent imprisoned in the Northeast as well. Racial disparities in the cumulative risk of imprisonment and parental imprisonment did not increase linearly with increases in the cumulative risk for all groups.

Racial inequality in the annual risk of Tuberculosis infection in the United States, 1910-1933

Tuberculosis (TB) mortality rates in the USA fell rapidly from 1910 to 1933. However, during this period, racial disparities in TB mortality in the nations expanding cities grew. Because of long delays between infection and disease, TB mortality is a poor indicator of short-term changes in transmission. We estimated the annual risk of TB infection (ARTI) in 11 large US cities to understand whether rising inequality in mortality reflected rising inequality in ARTI using city-level TB mortality data compiled by the US Department of Commerce from 1910 to 1933. We estimated ARTI for African-Americans and whites using pediatric extrapulmonary TB mortality data for African-Americans and whites in our panel of cities. We also estimated age-adjusted pulmonary TB mortality rates for these cities. We find that the ratio of ARTI for African-Americans vs. whites increased from 2·1 (95% CI = 1·7, 2·4) in 1910 to 4·2 (95% CI = 3·4, 5·2) in 1933. This change mirrored the increasing inequality in age-adjusted pulmonary TB mortality during this period. These findings may reflect the combined effects of migration, inequality in access to care, increasing population density, and racial residential segregation in northern cities during this period.

Tenancy and African American Marriage in the Postbellum South

The pervasiveness of tenancy in the postbellum South had countervailing effects on marriage between African Americans. Tenancy placed severe constraints on African American women’s ability to find independent agricultural work. Freedwomen confronted not only planters’ reluctance to contract directly with women but also whites’ refusal to sell land to African Americans. Marriage consequently became one of African American women’s few viable routes into the agricultural labor market. We find that the more counties relied on tenant farming, the more common was marriage among their youngest and oldest African American residents. However, many freedwomen resented their subordinate status within tenant marriages. Thus, we find that tenancy contributed to union dissolution as well as union formation among freedpeople. Microdata tracing individuals’ marital transitions are consistent with these county-level results.

Management Development in the Foodservice Industry

How hospitality schools can best prepare their students for tomorrows chal lenges has long been a controversial issue. In the first two articles of this series, we suggested that hospitality education should at least help students to understand the underlying economic environment and nature of competition in their industry. In this article we explore contemporary management theory and conclude with a summary of recommendations for hospitality educators, based on the material in all three articles in this series.

Tenancy, Marriage, and the Boll Weevil Infestation, 1892–1930

In the early twentieth century, the cotton-growing regions of the U.S. South were dominated by families of tenant farmers. Tenant farming created opportunities and incentives for prospective tenants to marry at young ages. These opportunities and incentives especially affected African Americans, who had few alternatives to working as tenants. Using complete-count Census of Population data from 1900–1930 and Census of Agriculture data from 1889–1929, we find that increases in tenancy over time increased the prevalence of marriage among young African Americans. We then study how marriage was affected by one of the most notorious disruptions to southern agriculture at the turn of the century: the boll weevil infestation of 1892–1922. Using historical Department of Agriculture maps, we show that the boll weevil’s arrival reduced the share of farms worked by tenants as well as the share of African Americans who married at young ages. When the boll weevil infestation altered African Americans’ opportunities and incentives to marry, the share of African Americans who married young fell accordingly. Our results provide new evidence about the effect of economic and political institutions on demographic transformations.