Annual Review of Sociology最新文献

Despite long-standing recognition of the importance of family background in shaping life outcomes, only recently have empirical studies in demography, stratification, and other areas begun to consider the influence of kin other than parents. These new studies reflect the increasing availability of genealogical microdata that provide information about ancestors and kin over three or more generations. These data sets, including family genealogies, linked vital registration records, population registers, longitudinal surveys, and other sources, are valuable resources for social research on family, population, and stratification in a multigenerational perspective. This article reviews relevant recent studies, introduces and presents examples of the most important sources of genealogical microdata, identifies key methodological issues in the construction and analysis of genealogical data, and suggests directions for future research.

Over the past half-century, scholars in the interdisciplinary field of Judgment and Decision Making have amassed a trove of findings, theories, and prescriptions regarding the processes ordinary people enact when making choices. But this body of knowledge has had little influence on sociology. Sociological research on choice emphasizes how features of the social environment shape individual behavior, not people's underlying decision processes. Our aim in this article is to provide an overview of selected ideas, models, and data sources from decision research that can fuel new lines of inquiry on how socially situated actors navigate both everyday and major life choices. We also highlight opportunities and challenges for cross-fertilization between sociology and decision research that can allow the methods, findings, and contexts of each field to expand their joint range of inquiry.

Despite their egalitarian ethos, schools are social sorting machines, creating categories that serve as the foundation of later life inequalities. In this review, we apply the theory of categorical inequality to education, focusing particularly on contemporary American schools. We discuss the range of categories that schools create, adopt, and reinforce, as well as the mechanisms through which these categories contribute to production of inequalities within schools and beyond. We argue that this categorical inequality frame helps to resolve a fundamental tension in the sociology of education and inequality, shedding light on how schools can-at once-be egalitarian institutions and agents of inequality. By applying the notion of categorical inequality to schools, we provide a set of conceptual tools that can help researchers understand, measure, and evaluate the ways in which schools structure social inequality.

Research on wealth inequality and accumulation and the data upon which it relies have expanded substantially in the twenty-first century. While the field has experienced rapid growth, conceptual and methodological challenges remain. We begin by discussing two major unresolved methodological concerns facing wealth research: how to address challenges to causal inference posed by wealth's cumulative nature and how to operationalize net worth, given its highly skewed nature. To underscore the need for continued empirical attention to net worth, we review trends in wealth levels and inequality and evaluate wealth's distinctiveness as an indicator of social stratification. Next, we provide an overview of data sources available for wealth research. We then review recent empirical evidence on the effects of wealth on other social outcomes, as well as research on the determinants of wealth. We close with a list of promising avenues for future research on wealth, its causes, and its consequences.

Graduate and professional education play an increasingly important role in economic inequality and elite formation in the United States, but sociologists have not subjected stratification in and through graduate education to the same level of scrutiny recently applied to undergraduate and sub-baccalaureate education. In this review, we discuss how prominent stratification theories might be extended to studies of the role of graduate and professional education, and we review research about stratification at junctures along student pathways into and through postbaccalaureate education to the labor market. Especially in doctoral and professional education, we find persistent stratification, including pronounced educational inheritance and disparities in participation and degree attainment by race/ethnicity and gender. We propose future directions for inquiry, highlighting unanswered questions and conceptual issues concerning how the field of and pathways through postbaccalaureate education contribute to social stratification.