By AAPSS staff
The following podcast features an interview conducted by Stephanie Marudas with Douglas Massey. He is coeditor, along with Katharine Donato, Jonathan Hiskey, and Jorge Durand, of the July 2010 Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, “Continental Divides: International Migration in the Americas.” Massey is a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, and the founder and co-director of the Mexican Migration Project and Latin American Migration Project.
Stephanie Marudas: In The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science issue about immigration, you and Jorge Durand make the case that Latin America is no longer an immigrant destination but rather an exporter of migrants. You look at three migration patterns that have characterized the region for the past 50 years. Can you tell us what those patterns are and what they signify?
Douglas Massey: For most of its history, Latin America was an area of in-migration and attracted Europeans in to the various countries; Mexico being no exception. Even a famous person like Frieda Kahlo, her father was an immigrant from Germany. But the major immigrant-receiving nations in Latin America historically were Brazil and Argentina; the more minor immigrant-receiving nations were Chile and Venezuela. And this was part of a project of nation-building launched by many of these countries to increase their standing in the world, bring in more people, and develop. And this all came to an end in the 1930s. After the Depression and the Second World War, immigration revived in various countries. In Argentina, it continued but it stopped attracting migrants from Europe and instead began attracting migrants from other countries in Latin America. Brazil stopped attracting migrants entirely and started sending them out to the United States. Venezuela, during the oil boom years, continued to attract immigrants from Spain and from other countries in Europe. But with the oil bust after the 1980s, that dried up and the migrants started going back to Europe as Europe boomed. The main exception to this was Mexico; although Mexico had been a country of immigration and brought in immigrants through the 1930s. Really from the 1940s on, it was pretty much a country of labor export. So Mexican immigration in the United States goes way back to the beginning of the twentieth century. But after the Depression killed it, and there were massive deportation campaigns in the United States, it was restarted in 1942 when the United States got into the Second World War and launched a labor recruitment program known as the Bracero Program. And the Bracero Program for the next 22 years recruited Mexican workers for short-term labor in the United States. By the late 1950s, 450,000 Mexicans were entering each year on temporary work visas and about 50,000 Mexicans were entering on permanent resident visas. So the shift from immigrant-receiving to immigrant-exporting happened first in Mexico, and then it spread to other countries in Latin America after the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1960s and 1970s, Mexican migration continued; although after we shut down the Bracero Program, migration shifted to undocumented auspices. And during the United States intervention in Central America, we generated large streams of refugees, most of which ended up in the United States. Some were welcomed, like Nicaraguans and Cubans and Dominicans because they were fleeing left-wing governments. Those fleeing right-wing governments were not welcomed and ended up in undocumented status and populated the United States during the 1980s. As the economic restructuring spread during the 1980s and 1990s, migration streams emerged from places like Colombia, Peru, Ecuador. And even in more recent years—as the crises have deepened and spread—they have spread to places like Brazil and Argentina. Argentina also sends out large numbers of migrants to other places. So Mexico is unusual in that 99.9 percent of its migrants come to the United States. Peru sends out large numbers of migrants but only half come to the United States and the rest go all over the world, to Europe, to Japan, to Australia, to Canada. Ecuador sends large numbers to the United States but also to Spain. So you really have this diversity of patterns in Latin America; and Latin America—as a whole—progressively has shifted from a country of importing people from abroad to a region that exports people, both the United States and to Europe; and in many cases even f[a]rther afield, to Australia and New Zealand and Japan.
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Add Comment (0)By AAPSS staff
From left, David Harding, Michele Lamont and Mario Small
What is the role of culture in poverty? Sociologists David Harding, Michèle Lamont, Mario Small (editors), and William Julius Wilson (contributor) take up the long-abandoned subject in their May 2010 volume of The Annals, “Reconsidering Culture and Poverty,” in which they reject an earlier view that people would cease to be poor if they simply changed their culture. Instead, they point to new research that reconsiders the ways in which “meaning-making” factors into the production and reproduction of poverty. They emphasize the need for careful empirical analysis of how the poor make sense of and explain their current situations, options, and decisions, and what they do to improve their prospects. They stress that ignoring culture can lead to bad policy if the real motivations of poor people are misunderstood or ignored.
On May 13, 2010, Harding, Lamont, Small and Wilson presented a policy briefing at the Capitol Visitor’s Center in Washington, DC, at which they summarized the findings of their volume. To listen to the two-part podcast of the briefing or read the transcript of the briefing, click on “Congressional Policy Briefing” below the photo below. In addition, interviews with each scholar are available by clicking on their names below their photos below.
 David Harding |
 Mario Small |
 Michele Lamont |
 William Julius Wilson |
By AAPSS staff
Policy Briefing
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Policy Briefing Q&A
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On May 13, 2010, a Congressional Briefing was held at the Capitol Visitor's Center in Washington, DC, with the co-editors and contributor to The Annals volume on "Reconsidering Culture and Poverty." The following is a transcript of the briefing, which was moderated by Michael Laracy, Director of Policy Reform and Advocacy for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, with David Harding, University of Michigan, Michèle Lamont, Harvard University, Mario Small, University of Chicago, and William Julius Wilson, Harvard University. You may also listen to or download a podcast of the briefing.
Michael Laracy: Good morning. I'm Mike Laracy; I'm Director of Policy Reform and Advocacy at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, where I coordinate our efforts to inform federal and state-level policy deliberations around improving the conditions and outcomes for America's disadvantaged kids and families.
I'm also the newest member of the board of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
So it's a double pleasure to welcome you to this discussion of the latest volume of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science on "Reconsidering Culture and Poverty."
The American Academy and The Annals have a long history-dating back to 1890-of trying to apply rigorous empirical analysis and scholarship to important policy questions. That history includes often looking at topics that others have neglected-including questions such as whether or not-or to what extent-culture plays a role in keeping people in poverty - or helping them escape from it.
I truly believe that the next two years we are going to see a great deal of attention here in Washington to the dual issues of poverty and opportunity. For the last year the oxygen-sucking issues of healthcare and jobs have prevented the administration and the Congress from really focusing on poverty and opportunity. Those two issues shoved everything else aside. With healthcare reform largely behind us and with the economy improving and jobs coming back, I really think that poverty and opportunity will be looked at more closely, particularly since the poverty rate tends to lag behind in economic recovery. So the timing of this issue of The Annals could not be better. Too often, discussions here in Washington about the causes and consequences of poverty revert to sort of sterile, default positions with liberals wholly blaming structural issues such as the economy or racism while conservatives too quickly fault our culture and our poor families for counterproductive behaviors and attitudes. Typically, debates like that do not do much to enlighten public deliberations and did not get us very far in addressing the problem of poverty. So reconsidering culture and poverty is a powerful remedy to that tendency, shedding new light and insights on the issue and most importantly helping us think about policy implications. So let me very briefly introduce our first speaker, one of the co-editors. Michele Lamont is a Robert Goldman Professor of European Studies and Professor of Sociology and African and American Studies at Harvard University. She will take it from here and then introduce our other speakers.
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The 2010 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize was presented to Robert Greenstein, Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), at a dinner ceremony at the Newseum in Washington, DC, on May 13, 2010. The $20,000 prize was created by the American Academy of Political and Social Science to recognize civic leaders who champion the use of evidence and informed judgment in the policy process. Mr. Greenstein will use the prize to help CBPP to create a new State Policy Fellowship Program aimed at analyzing the impact of state budget and tax policy choices on low-income residents and promote positive reforms.
The prize was presented by David Ellwood, the 2009 Moynihan Prize recipient and Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, who told those who gathered that “Bob does much more than get the facts right, he draws upon scholarship, systematic analysis, and remarkable political insight to stimulate the best possible policies at any given moment.” Ellwood lauded Greenstein not just for his use of evidence and “facts” in the policy process but for two other often-overlooked qualities. The first was his “astonishing political ability.…He can count votes with the best of them. He knows when to fight, and when to compromise. Above all he wants to make the legislation or the regulation better, not to simply make a grand political gesture.”
He also recognized Greenstein and the center for “the use of the best social science research” and described them as serving as “that vital bridge helping scholars move from the world of ideas to the world of politics and policy.”
In accepting the prize, Mr. Greenstein said, “as a nation, we face enormous problems—problems that may seem almost overwhelming.” In view of these problems, he added, “we will need academic research and analysis to help guide policy decisions to an even greater degree in the future than we have in the past.”
He went on to say that while there is no assurance that policy-makers will pay attention to the serious research and good ideas that come from think-tanks, universities, and other institutions across the country, “my colleagues and I at the center will be your partners in the future, endeavoring to help bring policy research and analysis to bear in policy debates in the extremely challenging times that lie ahead for our nation.”
To listen to remarks offered by Mike McCurry, David Ellwood, and Robert Greenstein, please click on the links below.
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| Mike McCurry | David Ellwood | Robert Greenstein |
By AAPSS staff
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| Alan Kruger inducts Larry Bartels as Academy President Douglas Massey looks on |
On May 13, 2010, seven of the nation’s finest social scientists were inducted as Fellows of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in a ceremony held at the Newseum in Washington DC. Fellows are selected for their outstanding contributions to the social sciences and their sustained efforts to communicate their research beyond academia to the policymaking world and public. The 2010 Fellows include: Larry M. Bartels, Donald E. Stokes Professor of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University; Rebecca M. Blank, Under Secretary for Economic Affairs at the U.S. Department of Commerce; Kitty Calavita, Chancellor’s Professor and professor of Criminology, Law & Society and Sociology, at the University of California, Irvine; Sheldon Danziger, Henry J. Meyer Distinguished University Professor of Public Policy, Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan; Carol S. Dweck, Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology, Stanford University; Paula England, Professor of Sociology, Stanford University; and Mark Granovetter, Joan Butler Ford Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and professor of Sociology at Stanford University.
AAPSS President Douglas S. Massey, Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, described the scholars as having “used the power of their intellects and their cutting-edge research to address questions of great importance: Does democracy work as advertised? Are we using the right measures to know how many Americans are living in poverty? Do prisoners understand their right to voice grievances? How has welfare reform affected children and youth? How do the mindsets of children affect their ability to deal with setbacks and failure? Are there gender gaps in pay arising from the sex segregation of occupations? And how does the power of social networks affect individuals’ abilities to manage their worlds and succeed economically?”
Each new Fellow was introduced by a distinguished member of the Academy and then proceeded to speak about how his or her research has influenced public policy in ways that were welcomed. To read, or listen to, the introductions of the Fellows and their acceptance speeches, click on the photos below.
Welcome by Douglas S. Massey
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 Larry Bartels |
 Rebecca Blank |
 Kitty Calavita |
 Sheldon Danziger |
 Carol S. Dweck |
 Paula England |
 Mark Granovetter |
By AAPSS staff
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| Robert Greenstein's remarks |
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“Thank you to friends and colleagues here tonight from the scholarly community; from the world of philanthropy; from journalism; from the administration and Congress; from elsewhere in the policy community; and from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities—my home away from home for the last 28 years. And speaking of home, I want to thank my wonderful wife Elissa, who’s also here tonight.
Thanks, most of all, to the Academy. I am both honored and surprised to receive this award. When Douglas Massey called to tell me of the award, I first thought that the committee had surely made a mistake. “Does the Academy know,” I asked Doug, “that I don’t have a PhD?” While Doug allayed that concern, I still find it quite daunting to receive an award in the name of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was such a towering figure, an inspiration for those of us who labor in his intellectual shadow.
It is also somewhat daunting to find myself in the company of the previous winners of this award—Alice Rivlin and David Ellwood.
As many of you know, Alice has been a pioneer in the world of fiscal policy, as the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office and first woman to direct the Office of Management and Budget. At the moment, she is both serving on the president’s fiscal commission and co-chairing another fiscal commission for the Bipartisan Policy Center. No one can work on fiscal policy in this town without having both great admiration and great affection for Alice—for her dedication, her integrity, and her decency.
As for David Ellwood, my bonds with him are deep, and I’m so pleased that he is here tonight. I remember when I first came upon David’s work. It was 1984 or 1985 and I came across a paper that he was presenting, entitled “Charles Murray: Did Robin Hood Ruin the Kingdom?” The paper was the first strong challenge to Charles Murray’s Losing Ground. I read it with growing excitement, and I began searching for other things that this young scholar had written. Soon, I was sending David’s writings to Congressional staff, journalists, and others and urging them to read them, including a terrific paper on poverty and welfare that David co-wrote with another young economist—some fellow named Larry Summers.
By AAPSS staff
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| David Ellwood's remarks on Robert Greenstein |
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“Daniel Patrick Moynihan is famously quoted as saying that, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts”. For most of his life, Bob Greenstein has been providing the facts. Those facts have changed many opinions, and reshaped the very fabric of government policies toward the poor. To a social or political scientist with a social conscience, he is a true American hero. For Bob does much more than get the facts right, he draws upon scholarship, systematic analysis, and remarkable political insight to stimulate the best possible policies at any given moment.
Bob’s career began long before he founded the remarkable Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He graduated from Harvard in 1967, and after working on, he was hired a decade later by the Department of Agriculture, where he was instrumental in the development of the Food Stamp Act of 1977. (How instrumental? On a segment of McNeil Lehrer, Lehrer inadvertently referred to the bill as the “Carter-Greenstein” bill.) As with all important and successful legislation, this recipe had many cooks, but it had all the classic Greenstein hallmarks, even then.
That law’s most prominent component was the elimination of the purchase requirement for food stamps. Prior to that time, everyone with the same family size got the same amount of food stamps, but they were charged different amounts to get them depending on their income. Low income families actually had to find cash to get their food stamps. The Food Stamp Act of 1977 did something seemingly simple: it said people should instead be given the difference between their assessed contribution and the total food allotment. So people would get different amounts of food stamps depending on their income and not have to pay to get them. Sounds pretty dry, but the change dramatically increased participation, reduced fraud, and simplified administration, and altered the politics of food support for the better. Indeed for many years it was a hallmark case we used at the Harvard Kennedy School.
By AAPSS staff
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| Mike McCurry's remarks |
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“A president that Daniel Patrick Moynihan much admired and served flattered a 1962 audience of Nobel Laureates at the White House by telling them they were the “most extraordinary collection of talent and human knowledge that has ever been gathered together, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
I am not conferring that Kennedy-esque distinction on all of you. But I can say this: There would be no doubt in Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s mind that there has never been an assemblage of smart and able public intellectuals who helped staff a United States senator than this group here tonight. Except when Moynihan himself sat alone over his Smith-Corona typewriter in the Russell Senate Office Building.
Let’s face it. Those who worked for Senator Moynihan enjoyed the costs and joys of that tutoring and came away with the love/hate relationship we know so well. We have never been so worked and tried and stressed, but few of us have ever been as richly rewarded with new knowledge and insights.
And with memories about precision, and reaction time, and appreciation for detail and statistics, and with time to look at clover and architecture and the bottom of a good glass of whiskey. We grew up and came of age in an extraordinary seminar that will likely never have another equal in our lives.
I was asked to reflect on Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s larger legacy. Why an award in his name? I can think of many reasons to give an award to my friend Bob Greenstein. But the reason he deserves a Moynihan Prize is because of that appreciation for policy, politics, and argumentation that Senator Moynihan seared in the souls of all of us here who learned in his many classrooms.
By AAPSS staff
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| Mark Granovetter with Robert Sampson |
| Robert Sampson's Induction |
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| Mark Granovetter's Remarks |
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On May 13, 2010, Mark Granovetter was inducted as the James Coleman Fellow of the Academy at the Newseum in Washington, DC. In inducting him, Robert S. Sampson, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University, noted: “Professor Granovetter has had a profound impact on the study of how social structure, especially in the form of social networks, affects economic outcomes. His 1973 article in the American Journal of Sociology [AJS], ‘The Strength of Weak Ties,’ is a modern classic that launched a revolution in thinking.…His 1985 AJS article, ‘Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness,’ in turn launched the ‘new economic sociology.’” The following is a transcript of Mark Granovetter’s remarks.
“My assignment tonight—and I appear to have accepted it—is to talk about the influence of my work and that of my discipline on public policy. Now, any such talk by a sociologist is bound to be more aspirational than inspirational, because the impact of our field on policy has been depressingly small. So it might appear that this really is a mission impossible.
Jim Coleman, after whom my Fellow position is named, might seem a major exception and yet the reality is that Jim’s greatest impact on policy came from his 1966 report on schools and inequality, which had a long, ponderous name that no one remembers. Everyone just called it “The Coleman Report;” but Jim wrote this actually when his academic career was just beginning and the deeper he got into theoretical argument the more his influence on policy receded. My own research has been on social networks and economic sociology, which might seem to be natural subjects to influence social policy. And yet there is no Council of Social Advisors to complement the Council of Economic Advisors—and by the way, that is complement with an “E”—and sociological advice has not really been sought at the highest levels of policy formation. Now why is that? It could be because the advice of professional economists has been so extraordinarily successful in preventing economic storms and calming economic waters, but there are a few inconvenient facts standing in the way of that conclusion. Actually, there is a very nice book by the historian Michael Bernstein at UCSD, which points out that actually the influence of economists on policy has ebbed and flowed quite a lot in the course of the twentieth century and twenty-first century and you cannot always assume that it is that important.
To come back to the sociology situation, my Italian colleague Carlo Trigilia asked a few years ago specifically why economic sociology, which would seem to have many ideas to offer for policy, has had so little influence. And his argument is that most economic sociologists favor meso- or macro- level analysis, talk about the way social networks function, and that is very complicated. And because it is so complicated it is really hard to draw policy recommendations from it, whereas economists study the incentives of individuals, we all know what that means, and recommends that policy shape those. So that is easy to understand, although I think in practice in fact it is usually a lot more complicated than it looks. I would like to argue though that in fact, contrary to what Carlo argued, that even though a lot of consequences of social network processes are hard to predict—and if you look at the recent literature on complex networks it really is quite technical and complex—but nevertheless I think there are still some policy recommendations that might flow from studies of social networks that are actually pretty easy to understand and would be clear improvements over present practice.
By AAPSS staff
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| Heidi Hartmann with Paula England |
| Heidi Hartmann on Paula England |
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| Paula England's Remarks |
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On May 13, 2010, Paula England was inducted as the Frances Perkins Fellow of the Academy at the Newseum in Washington, DC. In inducting her, Heidi Hartmann, AAPSS chair and president of the Institute for Woman’s Policy Research, said, “For much of her 30 year career in sociology, Professor England has focused on one of the great puzzles of modern life—why women earn less than men. While this puzzle is still not completely solved, we know much more than we did 30 years ago, in no small part due to Paula England’s outstanding body of work.” The following is a transcript of Paula England’s remarks.
“It is appropriate that I am inducted by Heidi Hartmann, because she was ahead of me in recognizing a type of sex discrimination that most people never notice, but that I spent a couple of decades documenting. We all know about lack of equal pay for equal work in the same job. And we all know about hiring discrimination.
Data analysis done early in my career convinced me that there was also a third type of discrimination. I discovered that while women and men were in sex segregated jobs, on average, female-dominated jobs required as much education and general cognitive skill as male- dominated jobs. There were both male and female jobs at most skill levels. So why did female-dominated jobs systematically pay less?
I came to believe that employers implicitly take the sex composition of jobs into account when they set wages. If a job is filled mostly by women, they set a lower wage than they otherwise would. It is as if there were a cognitive bias toward thinking that if jobs are done by women, they cannot be worth much. This bias, I believe, reflects a general cultural devaluation of women and, by extension, roles associated with women. Institutional inertia cements this bias into wage structures.
Assembling convincing evidence that the sex composition of jobs actually affects pay absorbed me for 20 years. No matter what I controlled, I kept finding a net negative effect of the percent female of an occupation on wages. Critics suspected omitted variable bias: crudely put, maybe the low pay was because the women and men who selected into female jobs were just losers on some dimension our datasets do not measure. Against this claim, I showed with fixed-effects models that the same person gains money when moving from a female to male job and loses money moving the other way. More recently, in aggregate pooled occupation/year data, I used fixed-effects models to show that the same occupation pays relatively less as it feminizes, and that wages follow sex composition rather than the other way around.
By AAPSS staff
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| Carol S. Dweck with Felton Earls |
| Felton Earls' Induction |
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| Carol S. Dweck's Remarks |
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On May 13, 2010, Carol S. Dweck was inducted as the Herbert Simon Fellow of the Academy at the Newseum in Washington, DC. In inducting her, Felton J. Earls noted “Professor Dweck’s scholarship inspires and guides us all, from student to parent to teacher, to be better at what we do.…Her induction in the Academy is reason for us all to celebrate for she is the consummate psychologist.…Her research has shown that students who have a ‘fixed mindset’—the result of being praised for their intelligence—value looking smart over learning. In contrast, students who are praised for their effort or their persistence develop a ‘growth mindset’ with its emphasis on persistence and hard work”. The following is a transcript of Carol Dweck’s induction remarks.
“For much of its life, psychology has attempted to document human limitations, limitations that were seen as arising from innate intelligence or character traits. My work has questioned these limits and shown that they can stem as much from people’s beliefs as from the structure of human nature or biology. It is a particular honor to be named the Herbert Simon Fellow. It is Simon’s work with his colleagues (such as Newell, Chase, Ericsson, and Hayes) that so compellingly pointed to the role of practice and experience in what looks like natural talent, but is really acquired expertise. In my research, I have shown that students’ own theories about their intelligence as fixed and limited or as malleable and expandable play an important role in their achievement. When we follow students across challenging school transitions, it is the ones with the malleable view--the growth mindset--who focus on learning, value effort, are more resilient, and show higher achievement.
Simon further believed that if we really know a lot about something we ought to be able to teach it. We and others have now shown that teaching the growth mindset can transform students’ motivation and raise their grades and test scores. We have also shown that praise can transmit these mindsets. Praising students’ intelligence creates a fixed mindset and decreases motivation and resilience in the face of difficulty. But, praising their process (their effort, their strategy) promotes a growth mindset with its greater desire for challenge and learning. It has been deeply gratifying to see researchers demonstrating these effects across many fields and even more gratifying to see public policy responding to our findings. Schools, organizations, even sports teams around the world are seeking to foster a growth mindset in the individuals in their settings and to embody these views in their culture as a whole.
There are so many more areas to be addressed. Recently, there has been a widespread view in psychology that willpower is a limited resource that is easily depleted. This has come to be seen as a basic biological truth that is rooted in glucose metabolism, and it has been bad news for dieters, diabetics, students during finals, and anyone who needs to exert self control over sustained periods of time. However, we have now shown that willpower is limited only if you believe it is. People who believe the opposite--that exerting willpower is energizing, not depleting--do not show impaired self control even after a series of demanding tasks. Again, what has been taken as human nature, deeply rooted in biology, turns out to be in large part just a widely held theory and one, we have now demonstrated, that can be changed.
We have also examined people’s theories about the moral character of others: is moral character fixed or can it change? And we have shown that these mindsets can play a key role in conflict. In our studies, Israelis who were taught about the malleable nature of groups harbored less hatred and were more willing to compromise for the sake of peace. Now, the only places that have more conflict than the Middle East are high schools. Here we have shown that high school students who are taught a growth mindset about people’s character show a decrease in their fantasies of revenge and their actual aggression after conflicts with their peers. It would be extremely rewarding to see such work play a role in conflict prevention and conflict resolution on a larger scale over time.
Innate qualities are undoubtedly important, but the hallmark of human nature is learning and flexibility. Our first impulse as social scientists should be not to try to categorize people in terms of their fixed traits, but to try to understand what underlies expertise or constructive behavior. And once we understand it, as Simon says, we ought to be able to teach it.”
By AAPSS staff
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| Sheldon Danziger and Kenneth Prewitt |
| Kenneth Prewitt's Induction |
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| Sheldon Danziger's Remarks |
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On May 13, 2010, Sheldon Danziger was inducted as the John Kenneth Galbraith Fellow of the Academy at the Newseum in Washington, DC. In inducting him, Kenneth Prewitt noted “For nearly half a century Sheldon has been in the thick of scholarly attention to and policy debates about inequalities, lamenting that ‘Poverty remains high not because of a shortage of effective antipoverty options but because the public and policy-makers have not made reducing poverty a priority.’ He shares that troubling conclusion with John Kenneth Galbraith, as he does a concern to plug away at correcting that flaw in the body politic.” The following is a transcript of Danziger’s remarks.
“I am honored to have been selected as a John Kenneth Galbraith Fellow. Over the course of my career, I have analyzed trends in poverty and income inequality and the antipoverty effects of social programs. John Kenneth Galbraith brought the extent of poverty in the post-World War II economy to the attention of policy-makers and the public. His The Affluent Society (1958), Michael Harrington’s The Other America (1962) and Robert Lampman’s 1959 presentation to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress provided the moral and economic motivation for President Johnson’s declaration of War on Poverty in January 1964.
Before preparing these remarks, I re-read The Affluent Society and found passages that resonate with the most important research findings and policy contributions of my career. According to Galbraith (1998, 40th Anniversary edition, p. 238), “The most certain thing about this poverty is that it is not remedied by a general advance in income.” That is, economic growth on its own is no longer a sufficient antipoverty strategy.
Explicitly testing this hypothesis was the focus of several papers that I co-authored with Peter Gottschalk in the 1980s, that culminated in America Unequal (1995). This research was supported by the Russell Sage Foundation. We demonstrated that, to quote Galbraith, poverty was no longer being “remedied by a general advance in income,” for two reasons. First, economic growth, especially growth in inflation-adjusted male wages, was much slower after 1973 than it had been in the prior quarter century. Second, “a rising tide was no longer lifting all boats” and earnings inequality and family income inequality were increasing even during economic recoveries.
By AAPSS staff
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| Kitty Calavita and Douglas S. Massey |
| Douglas S. Massey on Kitty Calavita |
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| Kitty Calavita's Remarks |
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On May 13, 2010, Kitty Calavita was inducted as the Thorsten Sellin Fellow of the Academy at the Newseum in Washington, DC. In inducting her, Douglas Massey pointed to examples of the work Calavita has done that have affected policy. “In research on the Chinese Exclusion Acts of the 1880s, she used archival records to examine the assumptions about the nature of race and gender that were incorporated into the laws and she showed how those assumptions created dilemmas for customs officials at ports of entry and complicated their implementation.” The following is a transcript of Kitty Calavita’s remarks.
“I am deeply honored to be named the Thorsten Sellin Fellow of the Academy. I will begin my brief remarks with an astounding statistic. Around the world, 192 million people reside outside their countries of origin. So one out of every thirty-five people alive today is an international migrant. Laws regulating this flow are notoriously prone to failure. The most obvious indicator of this is the large number of immigrants who live and work in the shadows, without legal status. Immigration is one of the most contentious issues on the political agendas of almost all advanced capitalist countries. It is not just that it divides left right and center. It also creates some very strange bedfellows. But one of the few things that almost everyone agrees about is that immigration laws do not work very well. In fact, a look at the experience of other nations and our own nation in other periods reveals a consistent pattern of failure, or at least dissatisfaction with immigration laws. My field of law and society among other things studies the gaps between the law on the books and the law in action. In other words, we study the disconnects between the stated formal law and law as it is practiced and implemented on the ground. Scholars posit all kinds of reasons for these gaps, including the idiosyncrasies of enforcement discretion, various kinds of discrimination, incompetence, and so on. But when the gap between the stated purpose of the law and its outcomes persists across time and place, as it does in the case of immigration, we can reasonably infer that something systemic or structurally patterned is going on. My work focuses on this persistent gap in immigration law and its stubborn failures. It is, in a sense, a “sociology of what doesn’t work,” or an “autopsy of failure.” I proceed from the assumption that if immigration policies fail again and again, and fail in comparable ways across time and place, an autopsy will probably reveal that the cause of death was not mere accident. Instead, there are systemic logics at work. In an early book, I looked at the way the U.S. Immigration [and Naturalization] Service [INS] implemented the Bracero Program in the 1950s and 1960s. That guest worker program for agriculture and the INS itself were plagued by criticism and scandal. I argued that this reflected the institutional location of the INS, at the fault line of a fundamental contradiction between the economic utility of illegal immigrants and the agency’s mandate to staunch the flow. Securing growers’ cooperation and using Braceros instead of illegal immigrants was its response to this institutional dilemma. But the problem was, for the strategy to work, the INS had to ensure a steady stream of Braceros and overlook growers’ frequent contract violations. The program went down in scandal in the early 1960s, not simply because of corruption or incompetence as critics at the time claimed, but because the INS confronted head-on a structural contradiction. As a representative of the INS employee union told Congress in 1980 regarding strict enforcement, “They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.”
By AAPSS staff
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| Rebecca Blank with Francine Blau |
| Francine Blau’s induction |
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| Rebecca M. Blank's Remarks |
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On May 13, 2010, Rebecca M. Blank was inducted as the Eleanor Roosevelt Fellow of the Academy at the Newseum in Washington, DC. While inducting her, Fran Blau noted that Blank’s scholarship “combines a deep concern about social issues with passion for unbridled intellectual inquiry and a deep commitment to objectivity and even-handedness. Through her research we have gained fundamental insights into the nature of poverty and the impact of the macroeconomy and social policy on the behavior and well-being of low income families”. The following is a transcript of Rebecca Blank’s remarks.
“Eleanor Roosevelt has been one of my heroes for many, many years. It is a deep honor to receive this award and particularly an award with this particular name. Good politicians are often artful at using phrases that seem to have great substance but are a little vague on the details. This, of course, allows folks with widely different opinions to think the politicians are talking to them. For instance, some of the more effective currently vague phrases are: “The need for deficit reduction,” “The importance of healthcare cost containment,” or “Movement towards a clean energy economy.” It is hard to be against such things, but the devil is in the details of what those phrases might actually mean.
Good social scientists are trained to think rigorously about words and their meanings. As an empirically trained economist, I have been taught if you cannot define it and measure it, it is not a useful concept. A great deal of social science literature focuses on defining and measuring concepts in ways that shed light on their implications. So, to pick a few topics that I have worked on, “what does welfare dependence mean and what would you look for in the data to prove whether it exists or not?”, or “how do you know if gender or racial differences that you are observing should actually be labeled discrimination?” These measurement topics are interesting because they place the researcher right at the intersection between academic and policy conversations. Policy-makers care deeply about how concepts get defined and academic research that proposes a particular way to put flesh on the bones of a vague political phrase can be both useful and controversial.
By AAPSS staff
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| Larry Bartels with Alan Krueger |
| Alan B. Krueger on Larry M. Bartels |
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| Larry M. Bartels' Remarks |
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On May 13, 2010, Larry M. Bartels was inducted as the Robert A. Dahl Fellow of the Academy at the Newseum in Washington, DC. When inducting him, Alan B. Krueger, Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy and Chief Economist for the U.S. Treasury, cited Bartels’s extensive work on American electoral politics, public opinion, and political accountability. “He uses empirical research to examine, in his words, ‘whether democracy works as advertised,’” Krueger said. “Larry’s work runs from the theoretical to the applied, from evaluating quasi instrumental variables to discovering uncomfortable facts that don’t fit with popular beliefs. He is also one of the few political scientists I know who attends the econometrics workshop at Princeton.” The following is a transcript of Larry Bartels’ remarks.
“I am very grateful for the honor you are bestowing on me this evening, and especially for my designation as a Robert A. Dahl Fellow. I had the privilege of being a student in one of Professor Dahl’s seminars 33 years ago, and it was an inspiring experience. His commitment to rigorous social scientific analysis of big questions about democracy impressed me then, and it impresses me even more now that I have learned by trial and error how difficult such analysis can be.
My most recent book, Unequal Democracy, focuses on the political causes and consequences of economic inequality in contemporary America. The first sentence quotes the first sentence of Dahl’s classic Who Governs?, which was published 50 years ago: “In a political system where nearly every adult may vote but where knowledge, wealth, social position, access to officials, and other resources are unequally distributed, who actually governs?”
In reflecting on how my own scholarly work has mattered, or might matter, in the world beyond academia, I think it may be instructive to trace the fate of two of the empirical claims presented in Unequal Democracy.
First, through a simple tabulation of patterns of income growth under Democratic and Republican presidents over the past 60 years, I showed that middle- and low-income Americans have generally fared much better economically under Democratic presidents than they have under Republican presidents. On average, middle-class families have experienced twice as much real income growth under Democrats as they have under Republicans; working poor families have experienced six times as much real income growth under Democrats.
By Stephanie Marudas
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The following podcast features an interview conducted by Stephanie Marudas with Amy Jordan about the current problem of childhood obesity in the United States. Amy Jordan was the Special Editor of the January 2008 volume of The Annals, “Overweight and Obesity in America’s Children: Causes, Consequences, Solutions.” She runs the Media and Developing Child Sector at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
Show extended entry >>
By AAPSS Staff
 Elihu Katz |
Is television dead? The classic television era of the 1950s and 1960s, characterized by limited choices of programs broadcast on over-the-air channels to families as if they were seated around a hearth, has given way to a new era. Now, satellite, cable and new technologies offer a multitude of choices for viewing what we like; when we like; where we like; on a variety of screens, telephones, and websites.
On February 19, 2010, scholars gathered at the Annenberg School for Communication to discuss the overreaching sociological impacts of television over the past 60 years and the way it has impacted our values, ideologies, institutions, social structure, and culture.
The symposium was led by Elihu Katz and Paddy Scannell, co-editors of a volume of The Annals titled The End of Television? Its Impacts on the World (So Far). The volume examined the effects on family and politics, on values and everyday behavior, as well as on democracy, social integration, trust and suspiciousness, materialism, and social and physical identity.
Joining in the discussion were Michael Schudson, Daniel Dayan, Marwan Kraidy, Joseph Turow, and Graeme Turner.
Session 1
Session 2
By AAPSS staff
The 2009 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize was presented to David Ellwood, Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, at a dinner ceremony at the Newseum in Washington, DC on May 7, 2009. The $20,000 Moynihan Prize was created by the American Academy of Political and Social Science to recognize public officials and scholars who champion the use of informed judgment to improve public policy. David Ellwood, who served as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1993-95, is one of the nation’s leading scholars on poverty and welfare.
The 2009 Moynihan Prize was presented by Lawrence O’Donnell, Jr., senior political analyst for MSNBC, who served as a senior adviser to Senator Moynihan. “I have been asked countless times in the last few years what would Senator Moynihan think about this or that issue of the day,” O’Donnell noted. “I always say I don’t know. Even when I have a very good feel for what his angle on the issue would be, I say I don’t know … because, at best, I could only tell you 50 percent of what he would think or maybe 80 or 90 if it was a simple issue. But that final 10 or 20 percent, that surprising, often counterintuitive, thing that would make it a Moynihan idea? Well, for that, you could only ask the man himself. So, in the years that I haven’t been able to check with him first, I have never spoken for him. Until now.
“I can tell you with absolute certainty that if he could be here tonight, Pat Moynihan would be honored to say the following words himself:
“For his distinguished record of scholarship, public service and strengthening the quality of government leadership, David T. Ellwood is presented the 2009 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.”
To read or listen to the remarks delivered by Lawrence O'Donnell and William Julius Wilson, click on the photos below.
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| Lawrence O'Donnell | William Julius Wilson | David Ellwood |
By Lawrence O'Donnell
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"David Ellwood’s work exemplifies that rare combination of outstanding scholarship and dedicated public service that the Moynihan Prize was created to recognize. Professor Ellwood has devoted his career to a policy arena that Daniel Patrick Moynihan cared deeply about: reducing poverty for American families and addressing the challenges of low pay and unemployment. Like Professor Moynihan before him, he has also played a key role in training tomorrow’s political leaders and encouraging his best students to enter government service."
"Beginning with his landmark book, Poor Support: Poverty and the American Family, Professor Ellwood has stressed the need to 'make work pay.' In a 1989 op-ed in the Washington Post, he wrote with Moynihan-like clarity about the plight of poor households with full-time workers. He said: 'The problem facing these families is not distorted values, dependency, or some culture of poverty. Their problem is that their wages are too low.'"
"Professor Ellwood’s work has significantly influenced public policy in the United States and abroad. His most recent research focuses on the changing structure of American families, the forces reshaping fertility and marriage patterns, and the larger implications of these changes for society and the economy. With Mary Jo Bane, he co-authored Welfare Realities: From Rhetoric to Reform. He is also the author of A Working Nation: Workers, Work, and Government in the New Economy."
By David Ellwood
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"Daniel Patrick Moynihan represented, to my eyes, the best in public service. I think of Daniel Patrick Moynihan as a magnificent thinker, larger than life. He was a man of both deep intellectual thought and principled action, a combination that is altogether too rare. I admired him intensely."
"I first met Daniel Patrick Moynihan in about 1980 and I had just read The Moynihan Report in a serious way for the first time. I was a young, new assistant professor and he came to visit the Kennedy School. I went up to him in a little social gathering and said, 'Your Moynihan Report was visionary. It was terrific; I just thought it was so impressive.' He looked at me – I had a beard and kind of long hair – and through clenched teeth he said, 'It took me ten years to get over that report,' and he turned away. Yet five years later he came back to the school and gave one of our most prestigious lectures, using the occasion to once again talk about family structure and the re-emergence of that critical set of issues. We see that report is one of the great visionary reports of all time, as William Julius Wilson just mentioned. It was classic Moynihan. It pulled together little bits and pieces of evidence and came to a startling conclusion. And it was not just a report. It was designed to spur action by the President to take on these challenges."
Previously...
- William Julius Wilson on Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “Agenda-Setting” Contributions to Social Science
- AAPSS Installs 2009 Academy Fellows
- Mahzarin Banaji: “Technology has allowed us glimpses of our deepest nature”
- Alan S. Blinder: Good Ideas that Come from Economic Reasoning
- Morris Fiorina: “I would love to believe that Obama read 'Culture Wars'”
- Joseph S. Nye, Jr.: Figuring Out How to Combine Soft and Hard Power in Different Contexts
- Lawrence Sherman: The Need for Research to Keep from Causing Crime with Punishment