In countries all over the world, legislation and policy are more rational, effective, and efficient when informed by careful social scientific data and analysis.

Empirical research should be front and center in the debate about how to solve today’s challenges, from the economic crisis, immigration reform, and health care delivery to racial gaps in school outcomes and declining middle class incomes. I do believe the president’s administration realizes this.

President Barack Obama has emphasized the importance of basing government policy on good science and has nominated highly respected scientists to direct the Council of Economic Advisors, U.S. Census Bureau, and Department of Energy. And yet, economists are the only social scientists with an assigned seat at the cabinet-level policy table today.

In 1946 Congress created the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) to formally consider objective scientific advice on decisions about the economy. The council institutionalized economic data-gathering and analysis as an attempt to mute ideology and partisanship in issues relating to the economic welfare of Americans. It made economic research and theory a permanent part of the U.S. policy discussion.

The role of social science more generally in U.S. policy development has not been similarly institutionalized, but was influential in the middle of the 20th century. Since then, social science influence has withered in the face of a narrow emphasis on free market policy recipes and increased partisanship, which has squeezed out reasoned empirical social analysis.

Without a council that institutionalizes independent social science analysis, it’s all too easy for everything but economics, and market solutions to social problems, to disappear in the midst of policy debates. The Obama administration needs a diverse group of social scientists to bring their fields’ research and evidence-based information to social policy.

To that end, social scientists are calling for the creation of a Council of Social Science Advisors (CSSA) to the president. A CSSA would institutionalize science-based policy at the highest level of the executive branch. It could examine, and when necessary produce, science-based analyses and reports that help the president make informed decisions about every issue domestic and international. Some of the many prominent sociologists who support the proposal include Patricia Hill Collins at University of Maryland, Evelyn Glenn at University of California Berkeley, Arne Kalleberg at University of North Carolina, Jerry A. Jacobs at University of Pennsylvania, Mary Pattillo at Northwestern University, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey at University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Kazuo Yamaguchi at University of Chicago.

While economists provide expertise on the operation of markets, solving social problems—including the crises in the economy —requires expertise on civil society, and that’s at the center of the sociological enterprise.

America can’t rely exclusively on the market to remedy every problem. The “economy” isn’t simply an abstract market, it includes women and men working, earning, and spending, worrying about sending their children to college, having enough money to marry or get sick, or to care for their aging parents. The economy includes the struggle of working parents to balance their time between the workplace and their children’s needs. How to solve economic problems involves understanding people and groups as well as money, how emotional stress affects decision-making, when and how unemployed husbands become effective homemakers as opposed to deadbeat dads, and even how fear of failing effects the willingness to take the risk to marry and promise a lifetime commitment.

Many other advanced industrial economies do a better job of involving diverse scientific expertise in policy development. It’s foolish for the U.S. government to ignore the expertise on comparative health care institutions in sociology and political science, or to rely only on the narrow cost-benefit approach of health care economics and the partisan appeals of vested interests. The same is true for policy involving crime, immigration, family, energy, and education policy. Sociologists, psychologists, historians, criminologists, and social workers can help us understand and build strong communities and neighborhoods.

One other thing I know is that the United States produces some of the best social scientists in the world. It’s time for us, and our responsibility, to bring that expertise to the policy table.

If the link between sudden unemployment and poor health is as strongly related as public health studies indicate, we may have an epidemic on the horizon.

Good news, though, comes in a recent study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (February 2009). Using self-reported health data collected from 23 European countries, Clare Bambra and Terje Eikemo confirm that unemployment is linked to poorer health. However, welfare states with the most generous levels of benefits have the lowest disparity, even when controlling for demographic and economic differences. This suggests a healthy safety net makes for healthy people, even when they’re unemployed.

Interestingly, the researchers find this pattern is less relevant for women—income replacement for women’s work, even in generous welfare states, may be too little and undervalued to have a substantial impact. In any case, the researchers suggest minimizing the effects of unemployment may be as simple as—gasp!—providing a cash cushion when people lose their jobs. A.B.

getting scammed by spam

“Dear Sirs, My name is Mr.Moses Odiaka. I work in the credit and accounts department of Union Bank of NigeriaPlc, Lagos, Nigeria. I wonder why anyone would ever fall for the too good to be true scam that I am proposing to you.”

Andrew Smith (Cultural Studies, January 2009) looked at 550 examples of such Nigerian scam e-mails and developed some possible answers. While the easiest explanation is simple greed, Smith argues Americans and Brits in particular are susceptible to the schemes because they fit preconceived notions about Africa and the rest of the foreign world.

The emails’ content often describes unstable and needy countries perpetually at war and natives unable to manage wealth. The author of the email, according to Smith, offers to act as a mediator who can explain this alien culture to the Western reader, allowing recipients to feel like they’ve received privileged knowledge about Nigeria.

There’s an economic angle as well, Smith says, but it’s more interesting and subtle than you might think. The appeal of the Nigerian scam e-mail for Westerners isn’t only that it offers a chance to get rich, but also that it appears to let recipients see how wealth comes into the world in the first place. In a capitalist system, money seems like it comes from nowhere. The appearance of these emails thus seems to explain—even as they allow recipients to participate in—the otherwise mystical creation of wealth.

People fall for these scams not despite the fact that they are too good to be true, but precisely because they are. M.K.

leading the internet herd astray

Does thinking something is true make it so?

In a novel Internet experiment, Mathew Salganik and Duncan Watts (Social Psychology Quarterly, December 2008) tested the idea of the “self-fulfilling prophecy” by manipulating the popularity rankings of an online music forum.

Their experiment’s website prompted visitors to listen to and rate free songs from unknown but “upcoming” artists and provided real-time information on how popular these songs were with other visitors. These results were tabulated and analyzed. Later, the researchers inverted this information for randomly selected participants so that popular songs instantly appeared unpopular and the worst ranked song was suddenly ranked as the most liked.

The authors found this artificial inversion had a huge effect. Previously unpopular songs quickly experienced renewed popularity amongst listeners, while songs previously popular became universally disliked.

However, this self-fulfilling effect was only temporary for the once-popular songs—they gradually recovered their ratings over time. But clearly non-popular songs got a boost. Perceived popularity, it seems, can certainly pull you up, but genuine popularity can’t really be kept down. A.B.

not everyone welcome on the glass escalator

Sociologists have known that when men enter so-called women’s jobs, they often advance in the profession faster than their female colleagues. We call it the “glass escalator.” But after interviewing black male nurses, Adia Harvey Wingfield (Gender and Society, February 2009) found that many of the same factors pushing white men up the escalator actually disadvantage African American men.

While white females may welcome their white male colleagues, black men are often perceived as physically threatening. White men may have an easy time bonding with a (usually white) male supervisor, but African American men may experience difficulties because of racial differences. Moreover, stereotypes of African American men as aggressive and incompetent leads co-workers to believe they’re actually less qualified than white female nurses to perform their jobs.

This research suggests that while white men ride the glass escalator, black men may be asked to take the stairs. M.K.

helpful tip for selling stuff on ebay

To both film producers and online hawkers, casting a wide net to pitch a product seems like a smart business strategy. A classic western with a comic twist should appeal to fans of both genres, for example. The same goes for those rare Elvis stamps on eBay. But how many categories can a product span before it’s spread too thin?

Not many, according to Greta Hsu, Michael Hannan, and O”zgecan Koc,ak (American Sociological Review, February 2009). Films and eBay items rely on a meaningful set of categories to attract consumers. When products attempt to appeal to too many niches, consumers figure them a poor fit in any particular one, thus reducing their appeal.

For example, the authors examined whether films described by critics and distributors as “generalist” did better at the box office than those targeted to specific niche audiences. Not only did these films perform worse than more specialized ones, they were panned by critics. Audiences like it best when a film is a “full-fledged” member of their favorite genre.

And it isn’t just audiences who have trouble with too many categories—producers do, too. Whereas movie genres aren’t typically assigned by film studios, eBay items are labeled by the sellers themselves. Again, items that spanned multiple categories were less likely to sell. Basically, generalist sellers failed to reach their target audience.

For something to sell, it has to meet the expectations of a discerning and specific audience. When it comes to films and eBay auctions, sometimes less is more. W.L.

letters to nobody

With town meetings becoming more rare, citizens write to newspapers to complain about everything from presidential scandals to leaky water mains. But letters pose a problem meetings don’t—there’s no guarantee anyone’s listening.

Face-to-face contact is important for public deliberation and debate. However, letters to the editor are directed to nobody in particular. Andrew Perrin and Stephen Vaisey (American Journal of Sociology, November 2008) looked to the Greensboro News and Record to understand how writers tailor their letters based on their “imagined” audiences.

Turns out writers pattern their argumentative strategies based on whether the problem is local or not. Downtown revitalization and neighborhood crime are addressed in a more civil and respectful tone—after all, local reputations are at stake for the writers and the newspaper. But when the problem is national or global, such as social security or terrorism, writers adopt an angry or emotional rhetorical style.

Perrin and Vaisey suggest letter writers imagine two parallel public spaces for airing their grievances—one that’s distant and quarrelsome, and another that’s local and polite.

Letters to the editor indeed provide a useful forum for voicing our concerns, even if there’s no way to gauge how others will react. W.L.

patience not always a virtue

It doesn’t take a sociologist to figure out that shantytown dwellers are exposed to environmental toxins, poverty, and lack of opportunities. After two-and-a-half years of ethnography and intensive interviewing in an Argentinean barrio, however, Javier Auyero and De’bora Swistun (Sociological Forum, March 2009) found another subtler and insidious downside to shantytown life: the inability to control time.

The residents of the barrio the authors studied live beside a hazardous waste incinerator, an unmonitored landfill, and a petrochemical compound. Over the last 50 years the area has become polluted with toxins like lead, chromium, and benzene. Half the children have high levels of lead in their blood, which has led to lower IQs and increased neurobehavioral problems.

For decades lawyers have promised successful lawsuits on residents’ behalf, corporations have promised funds to help families relocate, and public officials have promised neighborhood improvements. Yet those with the power to deliver on these promises come and go, and the residents don’t have the power to affect if or when changes will occur. They also can’t move out of the area—they don’t have the money to relocate.

The possibility of a time when their lives will be better keeps the residents hopeful, but indefinite delays year after

year put them into a holding pattern of frustrated waiting. Because those who control time are those with power, the neighborhood residents are transformed from people able to influence their futures into passive onlookers perpetually waiting for a better future. S.G.

cease and desist that casual sex

Criminologists have found that teens who have sex are more likely to engage in criminal behavior. However, few have explored how the type of relationship in which teens are having sex affects their criminal tendencies.

Addressing this research gap, Bill McCarthy and Teresa Casey (American Sociological Review, December 2008) compare the criminal involvement of teens having sex within a loving, romantic relationship with those who have sex in emotionally distant relationships.

They find that teens who have “loveless” sex are more likely to engage in criminal behavior. Teens who have sex in romantic relationships, though, are no more likely to engage in criminal activity than teens who abstain from sex altogether. The authors also argue that romantic love decreases the criminal involvement of teens who have previously engaged in criminal activity.

McCarthy and Casey suggest those in romantic relationships are less likely to be affected by “strain” caused by sexual involvement, including anxiety over contracting STIs, increased conflict with parents, intense regrets, and shame over being labeled by peers as a “slut” or one who “sleeps with sluts.” T.O.

the 7 habits of highly effective muslims

In the United States, we generally associate “faith-based initiatives” with the non-profit sector. But in Indonesia, faith is big business, Daromir Rudnyckyj (Cultural Anthropology, January 2009) learned after attending “spiritual reform” training sessions at Krakatau Steel, one of Indonesia’s largest steel manufacturers.

Rudnyckyj attended 12-hour, threeday sessions with many of Krakatau’s 6,000 employees. The sessions fused corporate training programs like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People with specific interpretations of Islamic religious scripture and practice.

Spiritual trainers encouraged employees to interpret their work as a form of religious worship, and told them that being an honest, accountable, and productive worker was also being a more pious Muslim. They also encouraged employees to use techniques like regular prayer to cultivate individual accountability and an ethic of self-management. They called it “built-in control” against workplace corruption.

While it would be easy to interpret such sessions as disingenuous attempts to co-opt workers’ religious practices in the service of secular capitalism, Rudnyckyj argues corporate and government elites in Indonesia really do believe a lack of religious piety is to blame for the country’s lagging global competitiveness. The overall reasoning behind these sessions, Rudnyckyj found, was to enlist employees’ spirituality in making the company more globally competitive. And, as more Indonesian companies have accepted the idea that cultivating their employees’ religious virtues can enhance their bottom lines, the spiritual reform business continues to boom. D.W.

sticks, stones, and genocide

Language is a powerful tool, and when words are used to cast certain groups as less than human it can set the conditions for, and even intensify, genocide.

John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond (American Sociological Review, December 2008) argue that expressing attitudes about socially created racial categories through dehumanizing racial epithets aided the Sudanese government’s genocide of black African groups in Darfur. And the enlistment of the Janjaweed militia clearly played a role in the process.

Analyzing data from the U.S. State Department’s Atrocities Documentation Survey of Darfurian refugees in Chad, the authors mapped the use of racial epithets during attacks on Zaghawa, Fur, Masalit, and Jebal villages. They found demeaning language to be most concentrated in the regions that government and militia forces had attacked together. Violence was highest when government forces participated in the attacks and increased with the use of racial epithets. The concentration of racial epithets and severe victimization had no connection to the presence of rebels in attacked villages, dispelling Sudanese counterinsurgency claims.

Hagan and Rymond-Richmond show that groups rallied together under an ideology of superiority and that expressing their hatred through language was crucial to their violent and oppressive actions. Based on this, they also suggest the government-led violence in Darfur meets the legal criteria of genocide. J.S.

gossip without borders

No matter how far you move, you may never get beyond the reach of your gossiping friends, family, and neighbors. At least that’s one conclusion that can be drawn from Joanna Dreby’s (Qualitative Sociology, March 2009) interviews with families split across the U.S.-Mexican border.

Dreby conducted 150 interviews on appropriate gender roles with migrants and family members on both sides of the border. Men who leave their wives and children for work in the United States are expected to be economic providers for their families in Mexico, while women who leave their children behind are supposed to remain caretakers of their children and guardians of the family’s morality.

Dreby found that gossip across borders plays a key role in ensuring that migrant men and women don’t stray from these expected roles and obligations.

Much of the gossip focuses on the alleged extramarital affairs of migrants. Affairs are more acceptable for men, as long as they remain faithful in sending money to their wives and kids. In contrast, women’s affairs are less tolerated (even in the case of single mothers) because they’re perceived as hindering their ability to care for their children across distances and as compromising the morality of the family. In different ways for male and female migrants, then, gossip is social control from a distance.K.H. & S.G.

when confusion hides agreement

The failure of the Enron Corporation was so spectacular its name quickly became synonymous with corporate crime. With so many companies soon after found to be committing securities crimes, it was impossible to call it a “few isolated incidents” or the fault of a “few bad apples.”

In fact, these companies’ crimes were so shocking in scale and scope they caused what James W. Williams (Theoretical Criminology, November 2008) calls an “interpretive crisis” as the media struggled to make sense of what was happening. While such a crisis could have called into question the very bases of capitalist enterprise, it instead revealed a shared set of assumptions held by most media outlets.

Williams examined articles from five major newspapers and magazines from the United States, Canada, and England, and found that while the diagnosis (and the suggested cures) for the scandal varied greatly from article to article, all agreed on a set of fundamental interpretations about the nature of America’s market system.

Among these common bases were the ideas that market economies are natural and inevitable, and that any form of regulation to free markets must satisfy a very high burden of proof, always bowing to the supposedly natural instincts of the market.

So while it may have appeared the media were struggling to understand what the market was and how it worked, they were unanimous in accepting the fundamental principles of the capitalist market, even in the wake of one of its biggest crises. J.S.G.W.

multiculturalism in korea

Despite strictly controlled immigration and pride in ethnic homogeneity, South Korea is on the fast track to becoming a multicultural society in much the same way Western nations did.

Andrew Eungi Kim (Ethnic and Racial Studies, January 2009) uses governmental data to identify and analyze the forces that will drive a growing influx of foreigners to Korea in the coming decade.

At the core is an impending “age quake” (triggered by a rapidly aging population and low fertility rates) and Koreans’ recent avoidance of low-wage manual jobs, which will create an estimated need for 4.8 million workers by 2020. Moreover, sex selective abortions have skewed gender ratios and contributed to a “marriage squeeze,” which has already led to an increase in foreign brides marrying Korean men. Accompanying intermarriages are “Kosians,” the bi-ethnic offspring of Koreans and other Asians, predicted to rise to 3.3 percent of the population by 2020.

These phenomena may help Korea sustain economic growth while closing its labor and bride gaps. But it may come at the cost of contending with social problems like illegal immigration and ethnic hostilities, problems Western societies faced transitioning to multiculturalism. J.S.

the neighborhood made me do it

Next time you blame the parents of a delinquent, think again. A new study by Brent Teasdale and Eric Silver (Social Problems, February 2009) argues the neighborhood in which children are raised has more to do with their tendency to commit crimes than parents’ efforts to keep their kids on the straight-and-narrow.

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the researchers found that regardless of a teen’s race, age, gender, or family structure, those who live in lower socioeconomic areas were more likely to commit crimes than those in affluent areas. And that finding held regardless of the lessons parents taught their kids at home.

If parents are to blame, then, it’s more for the neighborhoods where they raise their families than their actual approaches to parenting—which, of course, has less to do with moral choices parents make than economic limitations on a family’s budget. K.H.

whispering white power

Due to the stigma associated with violent racism, members of white supremacist organizations find they must hide their affiliations in many social circles. According to an interview-based study by Pete Simi and Robert Futrell (Social Problems, February 2009), this forced silence often makes their inner racist stronger.

This effect is particularly pronounced at work. Members of white supremacist groups are expected to push constantly toward the goal of an Aryan nation. Being unable to voice their beliefs openly in their jobs leaves individuals feeling like they’re letting the movement down. In response, they spend hours of paid labor time on white supremacist websites, listening to white power music, and paging through Aryan literature so they feel like loyal Aryans.

White supremacists also hide their beliefs from their peers at school. School is viewed as a necessary evil—something an Aryan child must survive in order to better the white race. Instead of speaking out on campus, white supremacist children strengthen their resolve with the movement by journaling about white power and telling stories of Aryan superiority in take-home essays.

It’s only in public arenas, like shopping malls, that members feel free to show their Aryan beliefs in racist tattoos or loud conversations about white supremacy. K.H.

cash out your dead

While most of us don’t see anything morally wrong with collecting life insurance when loved ones die, we may think twice about cashing in on the deaths of people we don’t even know. Yet, as sick individuals look for ways to pay medical bills, future funeral expenses, or simply to enjoy the remainder of their lives, many are turning to strangers to buy their policies and pay the premiums in exchange for the full death benefit when the seller dies.

A full-blown market for buying other peoples’ policies emerged in the early 1990s (in the midst of the AIDS epidemic), and as of 2007, investing in other peoples’ deaths was a $13 billion industry.

Business may be good, but according to Sarah Quinn (American Journal of Sociology, November 2008) the industry also faces increasingly high-profile charges of “ghoulishness” in the national media. In response, industry executives are reframing the practice of investing in death in more morally upright terms.

Quinn’s interviews with high-level executives revealed that many framed the issue as one of financially “consoling” terminally ill individuals who are having trouble making ends meet and “dying with dignity.” Other executives focused less on substance and more on the process of buying and selling itself— they discussed the practice as a highly rational and anonymous one, no better or worse than making any other investment in a capitalist market.

This research illustrates, among other things, the role of morality in markets. Even in the hyper-rationalized world of a market economy, industry elites still have to spend significant energy convincing people that what they do is not only profitable, but right. D.W.

Taxation is a vital component of government policy, yet most citizens profess little understanding of the tax system. Many Americans wish taxes were lower, but they want to maintain or expand most of the government programs taxes fund. Policymakers regularly pledge to simplify the tax code, yet it grows ever more complicated.

Tax myths are equally common. In recent years, social scientists have devoted greater attention to empirical study of taxes—how they operate, what effects they have, how the public perceives them. As it turns out, a number of things—four in particular—citizens and policymakers think they know about taxation are wrong.

myth #1: heavy taxation reduces economic competitiveness

Taxes distort the market’s ability to allocate resources toward their most productive use, and textbook economic theory tells us this is bad for the economy. Taxation may be necessary to fund government services and redistribution of wealth and resources in a way that conforms to the needs and norms of a modern society, but it’s a necessary evil.

But do taxes really harm the economy? And if so, how much?

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.

As 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.

How can this be? One hypothesis, suggested by economic historian Peter Lindert in his book Growing Public, is that high-tax countries such as Sweden, Denmark, and Finland rely heavily on consumption taxes, the burden of which is shared broadly across the citizenry rather than concentrated on firms and affluent individuals. Other analysts, though, contend that heavy consumption taxes weaken the economy, especially job creation, by raising the price of goods and services.

An alternative view is that the effect of taxation on economic health depends not on the level or type of taxation but instead on how tax revenues are used. Sociologist Gøsta Esping-Andersen has pointed out that at least some of the hightax nations shown below devote a significant share of their revenues to providing public services and transfers—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, unemployment compensation, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and food stamps, among others—that tend to boost, rather than impede, economic competitiveness.

For example, a schooling system that begins with affordable and high-quality child care (“early education”), includes good general education through high school for even the poorest, and offers broad access to university education is likely to facilitate innovation and flexibility in a globalized, knowledge-based economy. As well, universal access to health care and generous transfers to low-earning households improve the chances of building strong cognitive and social skills throughout the population. Government-provided or -subsidized child care and parental leave encourage women’s employment, thereby boosting the economy’s supply of ideas and creativity.

These are just some of the ways effective use of tax revenues can help offset whatever negative impact taxes may have on economic performance.

Heavy taxation certainly doesn’t ensure a competitive economy, but it appears to be perfectly compatible with one.

myth #2: republicans favor tax cuts because they believe they’re good for the economy and key constituents

“The one thing that unites Republicans from Maine to Mississippi,” Mitch McConnell, the current Republican leader in the Senate, told National Public Radio in January, “is tax cuts.”

He’s right. And it’s been true for nearly three decades.

One reason why this may be true is many Republicans believe less taxation is good for the economy. Another is that tax reductions appeal to two of the party’s core constituencies: businesses and people with high incomes. Both of these explanations have merit, but in his recent book The Permanent Tax Revolt, sociologist Isaac Martin offers an equally, if not more, compelling account.

It comes down to, Martin says, the legacy of Proposition 13′s passage in California in 1978, similar victorious initiatives in other states, Ronald Reagan’s presidential victories in 1980 and 1984, and the Reagan tax cuts of 1981.

Proposition 13 was a California referendum that restricted property tax increases. Movements for state and local property tax limits had existed for a number of years, but prior to the late 1970s they had enjoyed limited popularity and virtually no ballot success. The victory of Proposition 13, itself a product of a peculiar conjunction of circumstances, provided credibility and political momentum to the cause in other states and led to Reagan’s conversion to tax cuts as a political strategy. Not long after there were several additional property tax cap wins at the state level in addition to Reagan’s two election triumphs. In 1981, the Reagan administration successfully pushed a major tax reform, which included sharp reductions in income tax rates, through Congress.

These successes shaped the thinking of a new generation of Republican leaders, advisors, and voters. For many, they created an image of the modern Republican party as the party of tax cuts. Just as a generation of Democrats identified theirs as the party of the New Deal following Franklin D. Roosevelt’s success and popularity in the 1930s and early 1940s, tax cuts became the core element of the political culture of the post1980 generation of Republicans.

Moreover, for many Republicans the lesson of the late 1970s and early 1980s was that advocating tax reductions is the key to electoral success. Reversals by two key Republican presidential candidates in subsequent years are illustrative.

During the 1980 Republican primary, George H.W. Bush ridiculed Reagan’s tax-cut proposals as “voodoo economics.” Reagan won the primary and was then victorious in two presidential elections, continuing with his tax-cutting pledge throughout. When again campaigning for president in 1988,

Bush switched his position—his mantra became “no new taxes,” even though the federal government’s debt had risen sharply during the eight years of Reagan’s presidency.

This story replayed two decades later with Sen. John McCain. In the early 2000s, McCain criticized president George W. Bush’s proposed tax cuts as fiscally irresponsible. When running for president in 2008, however, McCain switched his stance and argued forcefully for further tax reductions, despite evidence that the tax cuts of the 1980s and 2000s had contributed to sizable budget deficits. The circumstances of these turnabouts suggest that both Bush and McCain were swayed mainly by a belief that tax cuts bring electoral victory, I would argue.

Republican candidates’ and politicians’ emphasis on tax cuts since the late 1970s has put taxes front and center in American political discourse. This is a marked change compared to earlier decades when taxes were much less prominent in political debate.

Using survey data going back to the 1940s, political scientist Andrea Louise Campbell has found that as politicians have devoted greater attention to taxation, public dissatisfaction with income taxes has tracked actual taxation levels much more closely than in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. As a result, Campbell argues, when policymakers raise income tax rates, they’re more likely now to encounter opposition not only from Republicans but from the citizenry as a whole. Though this doesn’t render tax increases impossible, it surely makes them less likely.

myth #3: taxes reduce inequality

A good bit of the political debate about tax policy in the United States has to do with the tax system’s progressivity—the degree to which it reduces income inequality. Most citizens and policymakers assume the tax system is progressive. Conservatives often think it’s too progressive, while many liberals think it isn’t progressive enough.

Taxes do help reduce income inequality, but not in the way many people think.

The U.S. tax system as a whole is essentially flat, rather than progressive. Individuals and households throughout the income distribution pay approximately the same share of their market incomes—earnings and other non-government sources such as investments, gifts from friends, alimony, and so on—in taxes. How can that be, when tax rates on income are higher for those with higher incomes?

Income taxes are indeed progressive, but that’s offset by regressive payroll and consumption taxes. Payroll taxes, which fund Social Security and Medicare, are levied at a flat rate (7.65 percent) regardless of how much one earns. But earnings above a certain amount ($102,000 as of 2008) are exempt from the payroll tax, so the portion of earnings taxed is larger for low and middle earners than for high earners. Consumption is taxed via state and local sales taxes. These too are a flat rate, usually in the neighborhood of 4 percent to 8 percent. Yet, because those with lower incomes by necessity spend (rather than save) more of their incomes, a larger portion of their incomes is subject to consumption taxes.

In a report by the non-partisan educational nonprofit Tax Foundation, economists Andrew Chamberlain and Gerald Prante estimated the share of market incomes that each segment of the population paid in taxes to federal, state, and local governments in 2004. They divided households into five equally sized groups (called quintiles) based on their market income. The effective tax rate is roughly the same throughout the income distribution: households in the poorest quintile paid, on average, 31 percent of their market income in taxes, each of the next three quintiles paid approximately 28 percent, and the highest-income quintile paid 30 percent. Contrary to widespread opinion, then, taxes accomplish very little, if any, reduction of inequality.

This doesn’t mean there’s no redistributive effect of government policy. It simply tells us that taxes aren’t the locus of redistribution. Instead, transfers are. Far more poor than rich receive cash and noncash government transfers.

The United States isn’t exceptional in this regard. Transfers do most of the redistributive work in rich countries. The chart at left illustrates this, showing the degree to which income inequality is reduced by taxes and government transfers in 12 countries. Larger numbers indicate greater reduction of inequality. In most of the countries, virtually all income redistribution occurs via transfers. Taxes do little or nothing to reduce income inequality, and in several countries they increase it.

Actually, these data overstate the degree of inequality reduction accomplished via taxes, because consumption taxes, which are always regressive, aren’t included. Sociologists Monica Prasad and Yingying Deng have attempted to incorporate consumption taxes into calculations of tax progressivity. They’ve found that in the 1990s and 2000s none of the eight countries for which a calculation is possible have had a progressive tax system. All have been regressive.

However, taxes do play a vital role in reducing inequality. They fund the transfers and services that do the redistributive work. The chart above highlights a finding from my own research: countries that achieve more redistribution via transfers are able to do so because they collect more tax revenues. (The redistributive effect of services is very difficult to measure.) In other words, taxes are quite important for inequality reduction, but what matters most is their quantity rather than their progressivity.

myth #4: globalization makes heavy taxation impossible

Over the past two decades, a number of policymakers and social scientists have predicted that globalization and capital mobility would engender a “race to the bottom” in taxation. With firms and investors free to move to whatever country offers the lowest tax rates, governments have a strong incentive to reduce taxation in order to gain a competitive advantage. Others are then forced to follow suit.

This assumption is a perfectly reasonable one. Yet so far it’s proved largely wrong.

Governments indeed feel heightened pressure to reduce tax rates, but while most countries have lowered statutory tax rates on investment income and corporate profits, such reductions have been mostly or fully offset by scaling back tax exemptions and deductions and, in some countries, by increasing the rates for other types of taxes, such as those on consumption and payroll.

The result has been little change in tax revenues as a share of GDP, as the chart above indicates. It shows tax revenue levels in 1989 and 2007 in 20 nations (both years are business cycle peaks, so it’s fair to compare them). In a few countries tax revenues decreased, but in others they increased. In most they stayed more or less the same.

Why no decline? Various hypotheses have been offered. A particularly compelling one is suggested by sociologist John Campbell, who points out that domestic institutions shape both the perceived interests of economists and politicians in the face of globalization pressures and their ability to pursue those interests. He writes:

Where labor is well-organized and politically influential, unions and their political supporters are willing to support relatively high taxes because they expect it will help finance the programs from which they benefit. Similarly, where business is well organized, such as through business associations, firms tends to see that relatively high taxes support programs (health insurance, education, and research and development) that ensure social peace and help them remain competitive internationally.

Moreover, the manner in which politics is arranged institutionally affects tax policymaking. Countries with inclusive policymaking institutions, such as corporatism or electoral systems that yield coalition governments, tend to be less inclined to race toward the bottom because these institutional arrangements encourage compromises that mitigate such behavior.

Despite very real pressures favoring lower taxation, we therefore observe little or no movement toward a reduction of revenues in high-tax nations.

The stability of tax levels over the past few decades doesn’t, of course, guarantee they won’t fall in the future. But it does suggest heavy taxation is feasible in a globalized economy.

Taxation is an integral component of a modern economy. But it’s complicated and operates much differently than most conventional assumptions and theorizing would have it. A better understanding of these realities not only makes manifest the necessity, it could lead to better, more informed fiscal policies.

recommended resources

Andrea Louise Campbell. “What Americans Think of Taxes,” in The New Fiscal Sociology: Taxation in Comparative and Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Examines U.S. public opinion on taxes from 1940 to the present.

John L. Campbell. “Fiscal Sociology in an Age of Globalization: Comparing Tax Regimes in Advanced Capitalist Countries,” in The Economic Sociology of Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 2005). Assesses the notion that economic globalization forces countries to reduce tax rates.

Gøsta Esping-Andersen. “Equal Opportunities and the Welfare State,” Contexts (2007) 6(3): 23-27. Highlights how government investment in cognitive and noncognitive skill development expands opportunity.

Isaac William Martin. The Permanent Tax Revolt (Stanford University Press, 2008). Explores the causes and consequences of the property tax revolt of the 1970s.

Monica Prasad and Yingying Deng. “Taxation and the Worlds of Welfare,” Socio-Economic Review online release in April 2009. Analyzes the progressivity of various types of taxes in rich countries.

Clearly not all social change is visible, but much of it is, especially the environments people build and alter. After working on a study of the visual manifestations of changing rural demographics, I realized the ideal approach would be to focus on change over time, because a photograph could preserve moments in time that could then be compared.

I had already photographed more than 100 sites around Ontonagon County, on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, in 1970 as part of a different research project. Using these photos as a baseline, in 1985 I rephotographed the area to document what had changed. The overriding visual theme was economic decline.

Since then I’ve returned almost yearly to Ontonagan County to rephotograph these scenes, and I’ve added many new sites to the catalog…

Some of the most eye-opening of these presentations have been to community groups in the Twin Cities metro.

These folks have been supportive of the need for more and better social science to inform public debate and decision-making. Yet it’s also become painfully clear there isn’t always a good understanding of what sociology is and what it has to offer.

The most amusing recent example came at a public forum in front of 100 or so elder learners at a public library. After a couple Minnesota-nice softball questions and comments came a high hard one.

“So is it true that sociologists are socialists?” This wasn’t the first time we’ve heard this question. Indeed, our kids, trying to figure out what it is we do for a living, have asked us both, and if our parents and extended families haven’t asked we suspect it’s either because they’re too polite to do so or too scared to confirm their deepest fears. Nor was it surprising. There’s been a lot of talk about socialism in the first few months of the Obama presidency. Newsweek even ran a cover story on the theme back in February.

Uncomfortable and inaccurate as it may be, equating sociology and socialism isn’t entirely off base. At a very basic level, after all, sociology shares with socialism a fondness for system-level thinking—how all the various people, organizations, interests, and ideas that comprise modern societies fit together.

In fact, the articles on the economy that appear in this issue reminded us of this. Not only do sociologists insist on seeing the economy as a complex institution that extends far beyond the aggregated interests of those who compose it, we see that many of the seeming idiosyncrasies and irrationalities of markets stem from cultural taken-for-granteds—knowledge, trust, habits, and norms—that enable the regular, ongoing functions of modern societies.

Sociologists, Barbara J. Risman reminds us in this issue’s One Thing I Know, are uniquely positioned to sort out the implications of this knowledge and insight for public policy and social action. That’s why she and an impressive list of our colleagues are calling for a cabinet-level council for social scientific advisors to the president.

So does all this make us socialists? Nope. Or at least, not necessarily.

Unlike socialists—or at least certain types of socialists— sociologists tend not to put full faith in the government to coordinate and control the complex wholes that constitute contemporary social life. Indeed, we tend to be especially interested in (if not always supportive of) the non-institutionalized, unregulated activities and beliefs of civil society—formal and informal associations, cultural mores and practices, movements for change, etc. (Hence the extreme discomfort among some of us with the easy equation of socialism and big government.) Moreover, our politics, as we have written here before, are as diverse and diffuse as the communities and people we study.

Perhaps none of this will stop our audience from conflating words that look and sound as similar as socialism and sociology. Next time we get such a question at Contexts, however, we’ll emphasize the suffixes that distinguish a belief system from a body of science and knowledge—there’s a big difference between an -ism and an -ology.