Economic Stratification Research Articles

Actually-Existing Success: Economics, Aesthetics, and the Specificity of (Still-)Socialist Urbanism

AbstractA quarter century following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the people's democracies, many of the dwellings, utilities, and public spaces built by these regimes continue to be cherished by their inhabitants and users. This has only increased as post-socialist urban landscapes undergo an ever-intensifying process of neoliberal “re-privatization,” de-planning, and spatial as well as economic stratification. Scholars, however, continue to produce accounts emphasizing how socialist cities and buildings, as well as the audacious social goals built into them, failed. This article provides a critical overview of recent literature on built socialism and identifies a tension between two parallel ethnographic and historical narratives. One argues that built socialism failed, because it was too obsessed with the economy and industry and neglected every other aspect of social life. The other pins the blame for failure on built socialism's alleged fixation with aesthetic or discursive realms and its corresponding neglect of the economy. The article closes by suggesting pathways for comparative scholarship that consider built socialism in terms of not only collapse and disintegration, but also success and endurance; not simply ofeithereconomyoraesthetics, but also of their reciprocal inter-determination and co-dependence. We must look beyond the lens of imported theories and consider “vernacular” or “emic” concepts rooted in the specificities and singularities of the socialist city itself.

ПРИНЦИПЫ ВАШИНГТОНСКОГО КОНСЕНСУСА КАК ИНСТРУМЕНТАРИЙ ПОЛИТИКИ ПОСТПРАВДЫ В ПОСТСОВЕТСКОЙ И СОВРЕМЕННОЙ РОССИИ

The article issues the theoretical models of economic development and and the practical experience of their implementing in different countries. The author tries to analyze genesis and evolution of economical power and global domination of the West. Also the rules of economic policies, which realisation became the basis of the government's economic stratification during the periods of classic capitalism and joint-stock companies capitalism are emphasized. The principles of the strategy of comparative advantages formed the basis of economic policy provided by Washington regarding other countries in the modern period, and are presented in document Washington Consensus, first used in 1989. By the term post-truth policy in this context we mean the imposing of the Wasshington Consensus ideology on the countries of the second and third world countries economies and popularisattion of its principles at the expense of development of the mentioned countries. The research also pays an attention to the big business’ development in post Soviet Russia, which has a criminal genesis without any alternative. The article also analyses the positive experience of Russian Federation’s economic development during the period of capitalistic relations’ development and during the social period. In this research we also made an attempt to justify the objective factors in terms of choosing new economic model

ПРИНЦИПЫ ВАШИНГТОНСКОГО КОНСЕНСУСА КАК ИНСТРУМЕНТАРИЙ ПОЛИТИКИ ПОСТПРАВДЫ В ПОСТСОВЕТСКОЙ И СОВРЕМЕННОЙ РОССИИ

The article issues the theoretical models of economic development and and the practical experience of their implementing in different countries. The author tries to analyze genesis and evolution of economical power and global domination of the West. Also the rules of economic policies, which realisation became the basis of the government's economic stratification during the periods of classic capitalism and joint-stock companies capitalism are emphasized. The principles of the strategy of comparative advantages formed the basis of economic policy provided by Washington regarding other countries in the modern period, and are presented in document Washington Consensus, first used in 1989. By the term post-truth policy in this context we mean the imposing of the Wasshington Consensus ideology on the countries of the second and third world countries economies and popularisattion of its principles at the expense of development of the mentioned countries. The research also pays an attention to the big business’ development in post Soviet Russia, which has a criminal genesis without any alternative. The article also analyses the positive experience of Russian Federation’s economic development during the period of capitalistic relations’ development and during the social period. In this research we also made an attempt to justify the objective factors in terms of choosing new economic model

Hong Kong’s Transition Toward a Knowledge Economy: Analyzing Effect of Overeducation on Wages Between 1991 and 2011

There is a need to transform Hong Kong’s economy from a service economy to a knowledge economy to address economic stratification and low economic upward mobility. This study used three samples of local employees for the years 1991, 2001, and 2011 to evaluate the effect of an economic environment marked by low private investment in scientific and technological innovation on the transformation of the economy and on opportunities for young adults to achieve economic upward mobility through education. The research goal was addressed by analyzing and comparing the effects of overeducation on wages in three different years. The results add a new perspective and demonstrate that Hong Kong essentially had a service-knowledge economy in those 3 years. They also indicate that although Hong Kong has made improvements in transforming knowledge into productivity between 1991 and 2011, it still has a long way to go to meet the requirements of a knowledge economy. The economic gap between occupations that are knowledge-intensive and those that are not has increased, and the economic situation of overeducated employees who fail to be employed in occupations appropriate for their education levels has worsened. The results have implications for local economic policymakers.

Oxygen and Hydrogen Isotopes in Human Hair and Tap Water: Modeling Relationships in a Modern Mexican Population

This study investigated the relationship between 18O and 2H isotopes in samples of Mexican hair and drinking water. The purpose of this study was twofold: to quantify the relationship between isotopes in Mexican hair and tap water, in order to understand the impact of water stress and differing socioeconomic status on accurate predictions of drinking water; and to determine whether currently existing semimechanistic models can accurately represent the relationship between hair and tap water. This study used a subset of paired samples of human hair (n = 62) and tap water (n = 76). Isotope values in tap water ranged from -11.4‰ to -4.3‰ and -79.1‰ to -22.5‰, and in hair from +9.5‰ to +16.1‰ and -90.8‰ to -53.7‰, for δ18O and δ2H, respectively. The most depleted δ18O and δ2H hair values came from individuals in the state of Morelos. For modern Mexican populations, positive correlations between isotopes in hair and water were not significant, with correlation coefficients r = 0.61 (p = 0.05) and r = 0.60 (p = 0.06) for 18O and 2H, respectively. Error-in-variables regression yielded linear fits that were somewhat better for 2H relative to 18O: δ18Oh = 0.183 [±0.132] δ18Otw + 15.7 [±0.9]‰ (r2 = 0.23); δ2Hh = 0.181 [±0.076] δ2Htw - 64.0 [±3.0]‰ (r2 = 0.34). In short, data from this Mexican population did not exhibit the strong relationships between isotope values of 18O and 2H in tap water and hair that have been characteristic of other populations studied to date. Given the economic stratification of this region and the poor correlation between hair and water samples, the authors considered the possibility that l, the fraction of the diet derived from local sources, and fs, the fraction of nonexchangeable H in keratin that was fixed in vivo, are local rather than global parameters for this population. The authors estimated different values of l and fs for each location. Given the anticipated importance of the nonlocal dietary contribution, they treated the isotopic content of nonlocal food and the offset parameters for predicting isotopes in locally derived food as tuning parameters and compared the results with parameters based on the American supermarket diet. They found that, although O and H isotopes in water and hair maintained similar geographic distributions, O and H isotopes in tap water explained only a small part of the variation observed in hair samples. Compared to the standard American supermarket diet, the Mexican estimates for nonlocal diet and local diet offsets predicted regional distributions of l and fs that cleanly segregated urban areas from rural towns.

The Sources of Life Chances: Does Education, Class Category, Occupation, or Short-Term Earnings Predict 20-Year Long-Term Earnings?

In sociological studies of economic stratification and intergenerational mobility, occupation has long been presumed to reflect lifetime earnings better than do short-term earnings. However, few studies have actually tested this critical assumption. In this study, we investigate the cross-sectional determinants of 20-year accumulated earnings using data that match respondents in the Survey of Income and Program Participation to their longitudinal earnings records based on administrative tax information from 1990 to 2009. Fit statistics of regression models are estimated to assess the predictive power of various proxy variables, including occupation, education, and short-term earnings, on cumulative earnings over the 20-year time period. Contrary to the popular assumption in sociology, our results find that cross-sectional earnings have greater predictive power on long-term earnings than occupation-based class classifications, including three-digit detailed occupations for both men and women. The model based on educational attainment, including field of study, has slightly better fit than models based on one-digit occupation or the Erikson, Goldthorpe, and Portocarero class scheme. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings for the sociology of stratification and intergenerational mobility.

China and global economic stratification in an interdependent world

This article examines the contemporary rise of China and its new role on the global stage within the context of semiperipheral mobility. Unlike earlier discourse on the rise of China that revolved around questions of hegemonic ascent, the focus here is on the impact of China’s advancement within the structural confines of the modern capitalist world-economy. What happens when a country like China, which makes up close to 20% of the world’s population, moves from peripheral state to semiperipheral state in a short period of time? Immanuel Wallerstein had argued that stratification of the world-economy took the shape of a three-layered structure with majority of the world’s population at the bottom, a decidedly smaller middle stratum, and a small percentage at the top of the hierarchy. Through an examination of global economic stratification from 1990 through 2015, China’s movement into the semiperiphery is shown to dramatically change the shape of this three-layered structure. This change that sometimes causes the distribution to appear quad-modal or multimodal is primarily because of the movement of more of the world’s population into the middle stratum of world-economy. This massive movement toward the middle is unprecedented. Furthermore, this new shape of the stratified world economy, will create an increasing amount of pressure on the countries in the middle that may translate into open military aggression and/or at the same time, a rise in regional and multilateral organizations such as the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas.

Race and resistance: A typology of African American sport activism

Historically, sport has been viewed as an apolitical space where organizers, managers, coaches, spectators, and sponsors expected athletes to focus solely on their performance and adhere to functionalist origins of the activity, including physical fitness benefits, character building, teamwork, and social entertainment. Despite these various positive attributes, the institution of sport does not operate in isolation from broader society. Instead, sport serves as a site where societal inequalities such as racism, sexism, economic stratification, and other forms of oppression are reproduced, exacerbated, and/or ignored. Throughout history, several African American athletes, sport scholar activists, sport institutions, and entrepreneurs have critically reflected upon this arrangement and courageously engaged in actions to promote social justice within and beyond sporting spaces. Recent actions by African American athletes across participation levels have raised questions about the term activism and how it is applied to certain actions. In an effort to foster a deeper understanding of this phenomenon, the purpose of this article is to present a typology that delineates different forms of African American sport activism. The proposed typology outlines five categories: (1) symbolic activism; (2) scholarly activism; (3) grassroots activism; (4) sport-based activism; and (5) economic activism. Implications for future engagement and research are discussed.

APPLICATION OF TOPSIS METHOD FOR THE EVALUATION OF ECONOMIC INEQUALITY IN OECD COUNTRIES

Abstract Growing economic stratification each year in many countries is such a pressing issue that even the World Economic Forum, organized in 2014 in the luxury resort of Davos, recognized it as one of the most dangerous threats to social order. The problem of economic inequality, pushed by the apologists of economic liberalism to the margins of media discourse, once again became a “hot” topic with the World Economic Crisis in 2008, the effects of which are still felt in various countries today, and which contribute to the expansion of global social stratification. The aim of the article is to describe the sample indicators typically used by organizations, i.e. OECD, theWorld Bank to measure economic inequality in the world, and then, on the basis of these indicators, create a synthetic instrument based on TOPSIS methodology, which will allow for preparing a multi-criteria ranking of OECD countries in terms of economic inequality.

Wealth Privilege and the Racial Wealth Gap: A Case Study in Economic Stratification

The emerging subfield of stratification economics is a response to the orthodoxy's resistance to recognizing the role of racial and ethnic disparities and its penchant for adopting cultural explanations for intergroup differences. With this view, the literature on the racial wealth gap and its particular embrace of the Life Cycle Hypothesis (LCH) offers a clear example of this critique at work. Not only is the LCH incapable of explaining why the racial wealth gap is so much larger than the income gap, but its limitations restrict the range of explanations explored. As an alternative, this paper introduces the Wealth Privilege (WP) model. Unlike the LCH, the WP model can incorporate the effects of contemporary racism as well as the systemic sources that are a legacy of several centuries of racialized policies. Using evidence from the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), this article offers empirical corroboration as well. Since the SCF queries households on their attitudes toward saving and investment, this article investigates the extent that cultural differences explain the wealth gap. To limit the problem of skewness, which is inherent in wealth studies, the analysis uses an inverse hyperbolic-sine transformation of household net worth. The OLS regression results show scant support for key features of the LCH while demonstrating the importance of asset ownership and family support, both crucial facets of the WP model. Two different decomposition methods, Blinder - Oaxaca and DiNardo - Fortin - Lemieux, corroborate these conclusions. As wealth is easily transferable across generations, the evidence supports the contention that household wealth serves as a source of economic stratification as it functions to preserve and even widen the racial wealth gap.

Politics and Economic Stratification: Power Resources and Income Inequality in the United States

What factors best explain the U.S. growth in economic stratification since the late 1970s? This research tests the power resource hypothesis with a pooled time-series analysis of income inequality. In a departure from prior research, the explanatory power of both national- and state-level political accounts is evaluated. By analyzing tax statistics, the authors isolate the factors that produce the largest gap in U.S. income distributions. Findings indicate that increases in the political strength of neoliberal national administrations and skill-biased technical change (SBTC) are the most influential determinants—although the SBTC account became much less influential after the 1980s. Other accounts have considerable explanatory power, as the results show that inequality grew after decreases in manufacturing and expansions in minority populations. But these findings show that national-level neoliberal political determinants best explain the extraordinary increase in U.S. income inequality.

Legal Analysis of Multidimensional Poverty Alleviation

Development, as regards people and countries is slightly more complicated. Indeed some authors have concluded that a fully satisfactory definition of the term ‘Development’ cannot be provided. Most look at development from an economic perspective as it relates to the Gross Domestic Product of a country. From the late 1990s, the United Nations documents started to emphasize “Human Development” that was measured by “life expectancy, adult literacy, access to all three levels of education as well as people’s average income.” Other scholars also joined in stating that indeed development cannot and should not be measured as against uni-dimensional aspects of income and GDP of a country. Gunnar Myrdal, a Professor Emeritus of International Economics suggested that the definition of development should mean “the movement upwards of the entire social system”. He added that the social system would include not only the economic factors, but also all non-economic factors including “…educational and health facilities and levels; the distribution of power in society and more generally economic, social and political stratification.” This multi-dimensional definition of development has generally been accepted as a better definition of development and to this writer it seems the best definition of what development is. Efforts to create development, under the definition, will necessarily mirror efforts to reduce poverty and, as we shall see later that will mean that poverty also cannot be defined and treated in uni-dimensional terms but rather it must encompass and include a wider array of factors.

Ethnicity, class, and civil war: the role of hierarchy, segmentation, and cross-cutting cleavages

Why are some countries prone to ethno-nationalist conflict, whereas others are plagued by class conflict? This is a question that has seldom been raised and rarely been examined empirically. This paper presents a social-structural theory to account for the variable incidence of these two forms of political instability. These two types of conflict result from distinct principles of group solidarity – ethnicity and class – and since each individual is simultaneously a member of an ethnic group (or many such groups) and a particular class, these two principles vary in the degree to which they are mutually exclusive or cross-cutting. The degree of economic stratification between groups and economic segmentation within them shapes the relative salience of each principle of group solidarity in any society and is associated with a characteristic form of political mobilization. In places where between-group inequalities are high, and within-group inequalities low, ethnicity should be the dominant principle of group solidarity and serve as the primary basis of group conflict. By contrast, in countries where between-group inequalities are low, and within-group inequalities high, class is more likely to serve as the dominant principle of group solidarity, and conflicts along class lines are more likely. We test these conjectures with data in over 100 countries on cross-cutting cleavages, ethnic war, and class conflict. The results are supportive of the theory, and provide evidence that how groups are stratified and segmented in societies shapes the type of civil war.

ANALYSIS OF FOREIGN EXPERIENCE OF INTRODUCTION OF THE SCHOOL DRESS CODE

The aim of this article is to analyze the international discourse on policy issues of school dress code; to identify problems relevant to the national system of education, and proposed ways of their solution. Methods. The methods involve summarizing of the content of the leading international sources regarding issues regarding school education and health; a systematic analysis of sociological research Results. The polemic aspects to the requirements for the appearance of the students are considered. These requirements affect many important aspects and the principles of functioning of an educational system and all society in general: the observance of the constitutional rights of a child, including freedom of expression on grounds of gender; tolerance policy of intra school and state policy in the light of migration processes; problems of leveling of social and economic stratification of children, etc. The advantages and disadvantages of existing approaches to the development requirements in the countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America are analysed. Scientific novelty. The influence of policy of a school dress-code on children’s behavior and health, relationships in multinational school groups, identification and safety of school students is proved. The ambiguity of information expressiveness and ignificance of garments of clothing and other elements of appearance of modern school students is disclosed: symbols of belonging to a religious and/or national culture, a well-known fashion brand, a modern informal/political trend, as well as the severity of gender differences in the design of school uniforms. The correlation between the wording of the requirements of the dress code and the effectiveness of its implementation from the point of view of minimization of internal stresses in the school team is defined. Practical significance. Based on the systemized proposals for quality improvement of the socio-cultural environment of educational institutions, it will be possible to improve the efficiency of interaction of participants of an educational process

Organization size and economic stratification in urban China: 1996–2006

A well-documented finding in social stratification research is that employees in larger work organizations earn more than those in smaller ones. This research first extends the institutional context of this topic from the typical market economy to transitional China. Mainly using two sets of nationally representative survey data, the research examines the changing pattern of size-earnings relation from 1996 to 2006. Results show that a significant size-earnings premium also exists in urban China and that it doubled during this 10-year period. Moreover, individual and organizational characteristics played contrasting roles in explaining the observed size-earnings relationship. Specifically, individual characteristics had no impact on the size effect in 1996 but did reduce it in 2006; on the contrary, organizational characteristics partly explain the size effect in 1996 but not in 2006. These findings are explained as the results of increasing labor mobility and a declining redistributive mechanism during this period, thus suggesting the development of China’s urban labor market.

The collapse of the Únětice culture: economic explanation based on the “Dutch disease”

Most explanations of social collapse highlight the ecological strain or the role of economic stratification but they hardly try to establish a link between the origins of prosperity and the causes of collapse. Our purpose is to establish such link, i.e. to provide an ex planation of collapse based on the origin of prosperity. For cultures of the Bronze Age, the prosperity came from metalworking, i.e. initially from a mining boom and then to the subsequent activities (bronze production) it allowed. In such context, the collapse can be the result of an economic crisis known in modern economic analysis as the Dutch Disease, a term that broadly refers to the harmful consequences of large increases in a country's income. Such explanation is particularly well suited to spell out the collapse of a Central European Early Bronze Age culture, the Unětice culture (2300-1600 B.C.).

Thermodynamics of inequalities: From precariousness to economic stratification

Growing economic inequalities are observed in several countries throughout the world. Following Pareto, the power-law structure of these inequalities has been the subject of much theoretical and empirical work. But their nonequilibrium dynamics, e.g. after a policy change, remains incompletely understood. Here we introduce a thermodynamical theory of inequalities based on the analogy between economic stratification and statistical entropy. Within this framework we identify the combination of upward mobility with precariousness as a fundamental driver of inequality. We formalize this statement by a “second-law” inequality displaying upward mobility and precariousness as thermodynamic conjugate variables. We estimate the time scale for the “relaxation” of the wealth distribution after a sudden change of the after-tax return on capital. Our method can be generalized to gain insight into the dynamics of inequalities in any Markovian model of socioeconomic interactions.

Realities of ambulatory multi-drug treatment of chronic diseases in rural areas of Lublin Province, eastern Poland - comparison of situations in 2010 and 2013.

The economic stratification observed for many years among the population in Poland, increasing poverty rates, especially those being effects of the current economic crisis in the country, and the rising prices of medicines, are potential risk factors for medication non-adherence among patients in the poorest class of the Polish population. Materials an method. The subjects were 2 groups of inhabitants of rural areas of Lublin Province in eastern Poland. The first consisted of 209 people aged 52-80 years who were surveyed in 2010, the second - 210 people aged 51-88 years, surveyed in 2013. All patients were outpatients who attended the Endocrine Clinic in Poniatowa. The studies were conducted with the use of the standardized survey questionnaire. The problem of medication non-adherence among the surveyed was evident and has risen from 43.1% in 2010 to 54.8% in 2013. Both in 2010 and in 2013, the main reasons for this state of affairs were the financial problems of the surveyed people. During the period 2010-2013, both expenditure on medicine as well as the ratio "patients' expenditure on medicine/expenditure on food" had increased. In 2010, 25 respondents per 209 (12%) expressed the opinion that they had always had sufficient means to buy necessary medications, in 2013 - only 3 per 210 (1.5%). In 2013, most of surveyed patients (54.8%) did not follow prescribed treatment plans (in 2010-43.1%). In most cases, medication non-adherence were the result of financial problems. Current regulations governing refunding of the costs of medicines may make effective ambulatory treatment of chronic diseases impossible.

The Justice Imperative in Scripture

The Hebrew Bible and New Testament reveal an abiding concern for the poor, including the creation of a just society. Economic stratification in the ancient world and the tendency for those in difficult circumstances to receive unfair treatment lead to a passionate defense of justice, which in many passages requires equitable treatment of all persons. This essay probes key biblical texts on such matters as interest, bribery, outreach to the poor, and the question of an afterlife to underscore a “justice imperative.” Despite arguments to the contrary, social justice and economic fairness are core themes in Scripture.

“Taking Mama Steps” Toward Authority, Alternatives, and Advocacy

Ten years ago, the task of blending work and motherhood was arduous, lonely, and painstaking. Most settled for face-to-face interactions or phone calls to friends and family for support. Sadly, frustrated conversations are still happening due to a lack of cultural acceptance, policies, and laws focused on blending work and family life. However, some women are turning to online spaces for social support. In 1991, Donna Haraway posited that online, affinity-based groups contain the potential for activism. Buoyed by digital social media possibilities for social support, we assessed feminist activism within a motherhood support group populated by women from various countries around the world. We found that consciousness-raising can further feminist activism within an online motherhood Facebook group by helping others learn to negotiate their choices, but economic stratification and educational divides still constrain social support; this suggests that digital connections influence affinity-based identities and feminist activism.