Facebook, Twitter users are affluent and urban, study shows

Facebook, Twitter users are affluent and urban, study shows

The survey, which studied the top seven social networking sites, showed that Facebook users generally have an "upscale profile." Nielsen also noted that people who are more affluent than the other two-thirds of the population are 25% more likely to use Facebook than those in the the lower third. And conversely, those in the bottom third of the financial chart are 37% more likely to use MySpace than those in the top third

Points of Migration

Center for Migration and Development (CMD)

Points of Migration

Assessing Your Divorce Risk - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com

Assessing Your Divorce Risk - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com

What are the odds of your marriage ending in divorce?

This is a risk with some pretty important consequences, but chances are, you don’t have the foggiest idea on how to quantify it. Until now.

My favorite economist (and my significant other), Betsey Stevenson, has put together a neat online widget for the folks at Divorce360.com. The widget crunches recent marital history data to assess your chances of getting divorced, and it does this by taking account of some very simple demographics. Learn your divorce risk here.

The Associated Press: More school: Obama would curtail summer vacation

The Associated Press: More school: Obama would curtail summer vacation

That makes poor children almost totally dependent on their learning experience at school, said Karl Alexander, a sociology professor at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, home of the National Center for Summer Learning.

Disadvantaged kids, on the whole, make no progress in the summer, Alexander said. Some studies suggest they actually fall back. Wealthier kids have parents who read to them, have strong language skills and go to great lengths to give them learning opportunities such as computers, summer camp, vacations, music lessons, or playing on sports teams.

"If your parents are high school dropouts with low literacy levels and reading for pleasure is not hard-wired, it's hard to be a good role model for your children, even if you really want to be," Alexander said.

Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Results (CA Dept of Education)

Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Results (CA Dept of Education)

API Reports - Academic Performance Index (CA Dept of Education)

API Reports - Academic Performance Index (CA Dept of Education)

The Reading Literacy of U.S. Fourth-Grade Students in an International Context Results From the 2001 and 2006 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)

The Reading Literacy of U.S. Fourth-Grade Students in an International Context Results From the 2001 and 2006 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)

The results show that the average reading comprehension score of U.S. fourth-grade students in 2006 was higher than the average score of students in 22 of the 44 other countries and educational jurisdictions that participated in the PIRLS assessment. Ten countries and educational jurisdictions had average scores higher than the scores of U.S. students; average scores of students in the remaining 12 countries and educational jurisdictions were not significantly different from the scores of U.S. students.

The changing impact of marriage and children on women’s labor force participation

Table of Contents, Monthly Labor Review Online, February 2009

The changing impact of marriage and children on women’s labor force participation

Why women have sex | Life and style | The Guardian

Why women have sex | Life and style | The Guardian

And so to the main reason women have sex. The idol of "women do it for love, and men for joy" lies broken on the rug like a mutilated sex toy: it's orgasm, orgasm, orgasm. "A lot of women in our studies said they just wanted sex for the pure physical pleasure," Meston says. Meston and Buss garnish this revelation with so much amazing detail that I am distracted. I can't concentrate. Did you know that the World Health Organisation has a Women's Orgasm Committee? That "the G-spot" is named after the German physician Ernst Gräfenberg? That there are 26 definitions of orgasm?

Office of National Drug Control Policy - Minorities & Drugs: Facts & Figures

Office of National Drug Control Policy - Minorities & Drugs: Facts & Figures

Bureau of Justice Statistics Drugs and Crime Facts: Drug use in the general population

Bureau of Justice Statistics Drugs and Crime Facts: Drug use in the general population

The Importance of Family Dinners V

CASA Ordering

The Importance of Family Dinners V

Steven Levitt analyzes crack economics | Video on TED.com

Steven Levitt analyzes crack economics | Video on TED.com

FORA.tv - Sudhir Venkatesh: Gang Leader For a Day

FORA.tv - Sudhir Venkatesh: Gang Leader For a Day

Family dinners work some kind of magic | Booster Shots | Los Angeles Times

Family dinners work some kind of magic | Booster Shots | Los Angeles Times

Researchers from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse found that teens who have family dinners fewer than three times a week -- compared with those who have family dinners five or more times a week -- were much more likely to use drugs and alcohol and have less academic success. Teens who say they have family dinners but that there are distractions at the table also have higher rates of substance abuse that teens who have frequent family dinners without interruptions.

Tax Myths » Contexts

Tax Myths » Contexts

One way to think about this is in terms of economic competitiveness. In recent years the World Economic Forum has scored most of the world’s countries on a competitiveness index that aims to assess the quality of nine components of a nation’s economy: public and private institutions, infrastructure, macro-economic policy, health and primary education, higher education and training, market efficiency, technological readiness, business sophistication, and innovation. The scores range from a low of 1 to a high of 7.

taxes1As the chart (right) suggests, as of 2007, the most recent year with available data, there’s no association across the world’s affluent countries between the level of taxation—the share of economic output (gross domestic product, or GDP) that passes through the government as taxes– and competitiveness.

Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity — What We Do — Weight Bias & Stigma

Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity — What We Do — Weight Bias & Stigma

Despite increased attention to the obesity epidemic, little has been done to stop the bias and discrimination that obese children and adults face every day. The social consequences of obesity include discrimination in employment, barriers in education, biased attitudes from health care professionals, stereotypes in the media, and stigma in interpersonal relationships. All these factors reduce quality of life for vast numbers of overweight and obese people and have both immediate and long-term consequences for their emotional and physical health.

social inequality teaching notes

Teaching Notes

Editorial - A Long Way Down - NYTimes.com

Editorial - A Long Way Down - NYTimes.com

The Census Bureau reported last week that the nation’s poverty rate rose to 13.2 percent in 2008, the highest level since 1997 and a significant increase from 12.5 percent in 2007. That means that some 40 million people in this country are living below the poverty line, defined as an income of $22,205 for a family of four.

The middle class also took a major hit. Median household income fell in 2008 to $50,300 from $52,200 in 2007. That is the steepest year-to-year drop since the government began keeping track four decades ago; adjusted for inflation, median income was lower in 2008 than in 1998 and every year since then.

Sorority Evictions Raise Issue of Looks and Bias - New York Times

Sorority Evictions Raise Issue of Looks and Bias - New York Times

The mass eviction battered the self-esteem of many of the former sorority members, and some withdrew from classes in depression. There have been student protests, outraged letters from alumni and parents, and a faculty petition calling the sorority’s action unethical.

Ousted sorority sues DePauw University - USATODAY.com

Ousted sorority sues DePauw University - USATODAY.com

The controversy spread nationally after The New York Times ran a story Feb. 25 that said the sorority had a reputation on campus for being "socially awkward" and that those who were asked to leave included every woman who was overweight and the chapter's only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The story also said those asked to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men.

How Class Works in Popular Conception, February, 2007

A Century of Difference

See Table 6 on page 30.

Class goes with musical taste and leisure pursuits in most rich countries (Katz-Gerro 2002).
For Americans, hunting, fishing, going to auto races, and listening to country music were workingclass
pursuits and preferences; classical music was a middle- and upper-class preference. The
differences in the first half of this decade were modest – all these things were done or preferred by
less than half of all classes – but statistically significant.

Social class in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Social class in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Parental views are the perhaps most essential factor in determining the socialization process which shapes new members of society.[5] The values and standards used in child rearing are commonly closely related to the parent's occupational status.[2] Parents from the professional class tend to raise their children to become curious independent thinkers, while working class parents raise their children to have a more communal perspective with a strong respect for authority.[2] Middle class parents tend to emphasize internal standards and values while working class parents emphasize external values.[2] Sociologist Dennis Gilbert uses a list of values identified by Melvin Kohn to be typical of the professional middle and working class. Middle class parents values for their children and themselves included: "Consideration of Others, Self-Control, Curiosity, Happiness, Honesty, Tolerance of Nonconformity, Open to Innovation... Self-Direction." This contrasted with surveyed working class individuals, who reported: "Manners, Obedience... Neatness, Cleanliness, Strong Punishment of Deviant Behavior, Stock to Old Ways, People not Trustworthy... Strict Leadership" as values for themselves and their children. There is a strong correlation between these values and the occupational activities of the respondents. The job characteristics of middle class respondents included: "Work Independently, Varied Tasks, Work with People or Data," versus working class parents of reported "Close Supervision and Repetitive Work..."[2]
“ Not once in a professional middle-class home did I see a young boy shake his father's hand in a well-taught manly gesture... Not once did I hear a middle-class parent scornfully-or even sympathetically-call a crying boy a sissy or in any way reprimand him for his tears... even as young as six or seven, the working class boys seemed more emotionally controlled-more like miniature men-than those in the middle-class families. ”

—Sociologist Lillian Rubin in Gilbert, 1998

Gender roles are also viewed differently by those in the higher and lower social classes. Middle class individuals, who were more open towards "nonconformity" and emphasized individual self-direction as well as critical thinking, were also less stringent in their application of gender roles. Working class individuals, on the other hand, emphasized gender roles. While working class people have more and more assimilated to middle class culture regarding their view and application of gender roles, differences remain. Professional class people are more likely to have an egalitarian distribution of work in their household with both spouses being equals in heterosexual marriages. According to Dennis Gilbert, "College life, generally a prologue to upper-middle class careers, delays marriage and encourages informal, relatively egalitarian association between men and women."[2][18]

Social class in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Social class in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace