Foundations of Sociological Inquiry Enumerating Inequality

Today’s Objectives  Discuss Enumerating Inequality  What is the Research Question  What Methods Were Used  How Does it Relate to What We Think We Know about Inequality?  Questions?

Who Wrote “Enumerating Inequality: The Constitution, the Census Bureau, and the Criminal Justice System”? 1. Ralph Ellison 2. Becky Pettit 3. Bruce Western 4. Katherine Beckett

What was the research objective in “Enumerating Inequality”? 1. To illustrate the growing salience of incarceration in the lives of low-skill African American men. 2. To detail how inmates became invisible, document their number and distribution, and discuss the consequence of their exclusion for accounts of American inequality. 3. To examine how the criminal justice system generates inequality. 4. To compare how censuses are taken in the U.S. and other advanced industrialized nations.

What was the primary hypothesis in “Enumerating Inequality”? 1. Incarceration has become a distinct life cycle stage among young, African American, men 2. Surveys that draw their samples from people living in households are not representative of the U.S. population 3. The Census fails to count the most disadvantaged segments of the U.S. population 4. The growth in incarceration has consequence for the study of American inequality

What methods did Pettit use to study the consequences of incarceration for the study of American inequality? 1. ethnography 2. analysis of secondary data 3. a laboratory experiment 4. an audit study

According to Pettit, why does sample selection associated with incarceration generate biased estimates of inequality? 1. Inmates are disproportionately black 2. Inmates are disproportionately male 3. Inmates are disproportionately poorly educated 4. All of the above

A review study  History of enumeration  For representation and resource allocation

A review study  History of enumeration  For representation and resource allocation  History of survey research  For resource planning and distribution  For sociological understanding of the population

A review study  History of enumeration  For representation and resource allocation  History of survey research  For resource planning and distribution  For sociological understanding of the population  Documenting the rise of the prison population  2.3 million people; concentrated among young, black men with low levels of education

A review study  History of enumeration  For representation and resource allocation  History of survey research  For resource planning and distribution  For sociological understanding of the population  Documenting the rise of the prison population  2.3 million people; concentrated among young, black men with low levels of education  Estimating the effects of sample exclusion  employment, wages  politics  health

How Does “Enumerating Inequality” Relate to What We Think We Know About Inequality?

 Methodological  Employs secondary data (historical and survey) to consider how growth in incarceration may generate sample selection bias  Compiles data from a wide variety of sources to make inmates visible  Finds that inmates differ in important ways from those living in households  Estimates of the relative economic standing of African American men are typically overstated; that is, inequality is actually greater than conventional estimates imply

How Does “Enumerating Inequality” Relate to What We Think We Know About Inequality?  Theoretical  Provides an epistemological critique of the study of inequality  Like schools, the workplace, and families, the criminal justice system has become an institution of stratification  But its effects are often hidden because inmates (and former inmates) are socially marginalized and occupy a liminal status

Have you learned something in this class this quarter? 1. Yes 2. No

Questions?