Browsing by Subject "inequality"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Can children break the cycle of disadvantage? Structure and agency in the transmission of education across generations
    (Springer, 2016-12) Burger, Kaspar; Walk, Marlene; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    Research has shown that parents tend to pass educational advantage or disadvantage on to their children. However, little is known about the extent to which the intergenerational transmission of education involves children’s agency. In this study we drew from two traditions in sociological and social psychological theorizing—the theory of cultural and social reproduction and the theory of human agency—to examine whether agency influences children’s educational performance, and if so, whether this influence can be observed among children across social classes. We used data from the Spanish sample of the Program for International Student Assessment (N = 25,003 15-year-olds). Results indicate that the level of child agency was weakly positively related to social class, that child agency impacted on a child’s educational performance, and that the positive effect of agency on educational performance did not vary by social class. This suggests that strategies to enhance disadvantaged children’s agency may prove useful in reducing social gradients in educational performance. More generally, our findings may ignite a debate about the role that social structure and human agency play in shaping social inequality and mobility.
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    Equal Protection and the Idea of Equality
    (2016) Wright, R. George; Robert H. McKinney School of Law
    This Article notes the existence of an immense body of historical and contemporary reflection on the idea of equality, a concept explicitly embodied in the constitutional provision for equal protection of the laws. Yet equal protection case law rarely incorporates, even implicitly, any such reflection, in any consistent, general way. This Article ultimately concludes that this surprising and unfortunate state of affairs reflects the overwhelming proliferation of complex and conflicting basic theoretical approaches to the idea of equality. These unfortunate circumstances might be partially remedied through concepts such as community, solidarity, and broad fraternity, but these concepts, in turn, lack the American constitutional stature, weight, and pedigree necessary for such a task.
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    Flood Risk Management: Exploring the Impacts of the Community Rating System Program on Poverty and Income Inequality
    (2017) Noonan, Douglas S.; Sadiq, Abdul-Akeem A.
    Flooding remains a major problem for the United States, causing numerous deaths and damaging countless properties. To reduce the impact of flooding on communities, the U.S. government established the Community Rating System (CRS) in 1990 to reduce flood damages by incentivizing communities to engage in flood risk management initiatives that surpass those required by the National Flood Insurance Program. In return, communities enjoy discounted flood insurance premiums. Despite the fact that the CRS raises concerns about the potential for unevenly distributed impacts across different income groups, no study has examined the equity implications of the CRS. This study thus investigates the possibility of unintended consequences of the CRS by answering the question: What is the effect of the CRS on poverty and income inequality? Understanding the impacts of the CRS on poverty and income inequality is useful in fully assessing the unintended consequences of the CRS. The study estimates four fixed-effects regression models using a panel data set of neighborhood-level observations from 1970 to 2010. The results indicate that median incomes are lower in CRS communities, but rise in floodplains. Also, the CRS attracts poor residents, but relocates them away from floodplains. Additionally, the CRS attracts top earners, including in floodplains. Finally, the CRS encourages income inequality, but discourages income inequality in floodplains. A better understanding of these unintended consequences of the CRS on poverty and income inequality can help to improve the design and performance of the CRS and, ultimately, increase community resilience to flood disasters.
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    The Price of Preserving Neighborhoods: The Unequal Impacts of Historic District Designation
    (Sage, 2020-11) Oba, Tetsuharu; Noonan, Douglas S.; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    Policies affecting cultural assets are popular yet imperfectly understood tools to shape local economic development. Historic preservation policies, for example, can have markedly different implications for original residents, prospective residents, and developers, even in the same city. Therefore, merely identifying its average effect can obscure important heterogeneity in its impact. This study examines the property value impacts of local and national historic districts across the distribution of property prices and how those differential impacts vary with the restrictiveness of the policy. A quantile regression model identifies the heterogeneity of effects among higher and lower end properties. The results reveal large differences between national and local districts, interior and buffer properties, and for different property values. These findings highlight the importance of and complexity in how housing markets react to attempts to guide local economic development.