William L. Yancey

The division of family roles.

In this paper, we analyze the marital role division between 1,212 couples taken from a probability sample of the Philadelphia urbanized area. We concentrate on the division of household tasks, of child care, and of paid employment. Using log linear techniques, we examine the effects of a variety of variables measuring social networks and the relative status of husband and wife. Data show support for a marital power model with husbands income negatively related to shared roles and with wifes education positively related to shared roles. Black couples are more likely to share household tasks than white couples.

The Antecedents of Community: The Economic and Institutional Structure of Urban Neighborhoods.

This paper reports the results of an analysis of the institutional structure of 90 census tracts representative of the Philadelphia urbanized area. Ecological positions of the tracts and the social and economic characteristics of local populations are related to the number, type, and distribution of local facilities and services. An examination of the contribution of local facilities to residential stability of the census tracts indicates that the strong zero-order association between local institutional structure and residential stability is spurious, a result of the place of the tracts in the spatial and economic structure of the city.

Racial and economic segregation and educational outcomes: one tale—Two cities

This paper reports the research examining racial and economic segregation of public schools in Philadelphia and Houston. Three factors effect the racial and economic composition of public schools: (1) the economic and racial/ethnic segregation of urban neighborhoods; (2) private school attendance among higher status and white students; and (3) varying rates of participation in magnet school programs. The evidence suggests that magnet school programs may attenuate racial segregation while exacerbating economic segregation. An examination of the relative importance of racial and economic composition of schools upon student achievement indicates that the economic composition of schools is the more important determinant of achievement levels. Given the propensity of magnet school programs to exacerbate socioeconomic concentrations, these programs should be reformulated.

Work and Residence in Industrial Philadelphia

Since its inception, Burgess’ concentric zone model’ has served as an ideal type for understanding the social organization of the American city. Although there have been repeated theoretical and empirical criticisms on the grounds that the model does not apply to certain. cities, its heuristic value has been such that it continues to serve as a paradigm on which urban research is often based, particularly with regard to the residential locations of ethnic or occupational groups. Taeuber and Taeuber, for example, concluded that their findings on the changes in residential locations of whites and blacks from 1940 to 1960 “all fit’into a generalized Burgess model of urban growth.2 In a similar vein, Guest3 and Haggerty4 presented studies of residential distributions within cities, by occupational status, as tests of the Burgess zonal hypothesis. More recently, Guest and Weed concluded their study of ethnic residential segregation in Boston, Seattle, and Cleveland by stating that “a modi-

Quality, Race, and the Urban Education Marketplace Reconsidered:

Hess and Leal suggest that public and private schools within cities form an “educational marketplace” in which families act as consumers who seek the best educational alternatives for their children. In such a marketplace, Hess and Leal assume that private schools offer better educational services than public schools. Based on this assumption, they hypothesize that as the quality of public schools within a school district diminishes, the percentage of students who attend private schools increases. To support this view empirically, the authors examine cross-sectional data describing 50 urban school districts and attempt to predict the percentage of students in each of these school districts who attend private schools. Included in their model is a variable for school quality—as measured by the percentage of students who do not graduate from high school. They argue that their results show that as public school quality decreases, children increasingly attend putatively better private schools. We disagree with this interpretation. In our view, a model that emphasizes people’s attempts to distance themselves from groups they consider socially different better explains the educational choices families make. In particular, we stress the tendency among advantaged groups (i.e., wealthier and white families) to seclude themselves from disadvantaged groups. In short, we do not believe, as do Hess and Leal, that school choices follow a strict economic model of human behavior in which families select the best schools from a range of educational choices. Rather, we suggest that families elect to send