Maryland Population Research Center...

Research in this area focuses on three important topics: 1) labor market inequalities in the U.S.; 2) causes and consequences of social inequality; and 3) policies and programs that impact the poorest of the poor. Much of the research uses large-scale, restricted-use data or innovative samples that have been, to date, used sparingly in population research. Projects range greatly from more traditional research into income inequality to new research into the impact of military employment.

Labor Market Inequalities in the U.S.

MPRC faculty associate David Segal (Sociology) who argues that ignoring military employment has ramifications for understanding racial inequality both inside and outside the military. Over 1.4 million people serve in the military and the military provides benefits for an additional 1.9 million dependents. In his Population Bulletin published by the Population Reference Bureau, Segal documents the disproportionate presence of racial and ethnic minorities in the military with African-American men being over-represented in the military by a factor of 2 and women by a factor of 3. While African-American’s remain under-represented in the officer class, there has been growing equality in rank between African-Americans and whites in the military. Segal argues that the military is seen as one of the few employers in the U.S. with relative equality in economic outcomes. This has attracted increasing number of African-Americans, and more and more African-Americans with higher levels of skills. In more recent work, Segal considers what effect the increasing presence of African-Americans in the military has on estimates of racial disparities on civilian labor force statistics such as racial differences in young adult unemployment rates. He finds that the skimming of more talented African-Americans into the military over the past 35 years accounts for a substantial amount of the rise in measured racial differences in unemployment rates in the civilian labor force statistics.

Causes and Consequences

Besides examining the causes and consequences of income inequality, MPRC faculty associates have investigated the causes and consequences of many dimensions of social inequality. These include family structure, outcomes in the criminal justice system, residential segregation, access to the internet, access to quality schooling, and access to health care and health outcomes.

Several MPRC faculty associates have studied racial inequality in the criminal justice system. How it is that African-Americans receive longer sentences is increasingly a mystery as more and more states move to sentencing guidelines that restrict judicial discretion. MPRC associate Brian Johnson (Criminology) argues in several papers that a detailed understanding of the criminal justice system is needed to understand this. In his 2003 article in Criminology, Johnson looks at the chances that an individual is sentenced harshly or leniently and how this varies by race. African-Americans and Hispanics are more likely to receive sentences that are harsher than the guidelines and less likely to receive sentences that are more lenient than the guidelines. But, Johnson also shows that much of this can be explained by how people are sentenced. Holding constant the type of crime, criminal record and severity of crime, African Americans are less likely to receive negotiated plea agreements and more likely to have their cases go to trial. Plea agreements tend to result in sentences that are lenient relative to guidelines. In a pending R03, Johnson extends his work on judicial discretion to understand how race plays a role in what charges are brought in a case. Besides offering plea agreements, prosecutors have charging authority and how any crime is charged has great affect on sentence length. Johnson is constructing the first administrative dataset that follows a case from arrest to final judicial outcome.

Policies and Programs

A special emphasis of MPRC researchers has been examining policies that impact the lives of the poorest poor. Much of this work focuses on the impact that government programs have on social and economic outcomes of families.

In his recent book Rooted in Place, William Falk (Sociology) studies the African Americans who remained in the historically black impoverished counties of the South that were the source of Great Migration North. Using ethnographic methods, Falk takes up basic questions about the lives of those who remained. What is life like for those who stayed in a place that many outsiders would see as grim, depressed, economically marginal, and where racial prejudice continues to place them at a disadvantage? Falk studies one extended family in the Georgia-South Carolina low country. He argues that an interconnection between race and place in the area helps explain African Americans' loyalty to the place. Blacks historically enjoyed a numerical majority as well as deep cultural roots and longstanding webs of social connections that Falk argues more than outweigh the racism they face and the economic disadvantages they suffer. In a pending R03, Falk proposes to extend his work and study the effects on community of the migration of people returning to where their families originally migrated north.

Maryland Population Research Center
0124N Cole Student Activities Building (#162)
College Park, MD 20742
Phone: 301-405-6403
Fax: 301-405-5743