Under neoliberal social provision, debt has become a primary tool for US households to pursue economic mobility and manage risk. Borrowing supports financial and non-financial investments that, in theory, should lead to lifetime income and asset gains from which debt can be repaid. Many scholars argue, however, that reliance on credit as a welfare tool significantly increases inequality, particularly along racial lines. In this paper, I examine this process of debt-financed asset accumulation by analyzing racial disparities in the relationship between household debt and assets. Using Survey of Consumer Finances data, I examine disparities in assets held at given debt levels across Black and White households. Results indicate that at equal debt levels, Black households' assets are between 30% and 80% lower than those of comparable White households. This suggests that White households benefit considerably more from social policies that center borrowing as a mechanism of social provision. This likely contributes to the persistence of the racial wealth gap. Racial disparities in access to credit, to homeownership, and to non-market financial transfers like inheritances partly explain White households' higher returns, but racial gaps remain even when accounting for these factors.

The alt-right is a white supremacist social movement that operates primarily online. Its broader constituency has not been studied systematically. Participants in white supremacist movements tend to join in response to threats to their social and economic status. Quantitative work suggests they come primarily from working-and lower-middle class backgrounds. Alt-right leadership, however, argues their movement successfully mobilizes a more affluent population of college educated professionals. In this paper, we examine predictors of county-level Internet search volume for alt-right content. Results indicate that counties with larger percentages of college graduates, of highly educated non-white and immigrant groups, and higher poverty levels for college graduates tend to have a higher search volume for alt-right content. We interpret this as evidence that the alt-right appeals to college-educated whites experiencing real or perceived threats to their economic and social status.

Student debt in the United States has had a disproportionate negative impact on black and Latinx borrowers. We argue that analyses of plans proposing student debt cancellation should therefore foreground their potential impact on racial equity. To do so, we use data from the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances and model the impact of debt cancellation on four key policy outcomes (reach, impact on the most vulnerable borrowers, borrower wealth gains, and impact on racial wealth gaps). We examine universal policy designs as well as designs that incorporate an income eligibility threshold as a means of targeting benefits toward less affluent borrowers. We find that cancellation amounts ranging from $50,000 to $75,000 yield the most desirable outcomes, especially when paired with a relatively low household income eligibility cutoff at between $100,000 and $150,000. Such policies would cancel roughly half of all outstanding student debt without substantially expanding the racial wealth gap, while still reaching a large majority of borrowers and leading to substantial wealth gains, especially for black households.

This study provides empirical estimates of the association between community hardships and foster care entry. We contribute to the literature on disparities in two ways. First, we expand previous measurement strategies by relying on race and ethnicity specific measures of community hardships and by estimating separate models for White, Black, and Latinx foster care entry rates. Second, we empirically model the association between foster care entry and community-level poverty, unemployment, and renter occupancy. Estimates suggest that only community poverty is consistently associated with rates of entry to foster care for all groups, implying that anti-poverty policies may reduce foster care entry.

Research on debt highlights its use as a tool for investment and a substitute for public welfare programs. Use of debt, however, is not equal across social groups. Black households in particular have lower debt levels than white households. In this paper, we explore the context behind massive racial disparities in household debt. Conceptually, we propose that personal debt is an indicator of integration in the financial system. As such, we argue that black households' lower debt levels can be understood as financial isolation rather than financial health. We support this argument by using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances to estimate racial differences in access to financial tools net of racial differences in socioeconomic status, asset levels, and financial literacy. We also show that black households' financial information networks are different from white households' in ways that suggest restricted access to formal financial institutions.

Payday loans are a high‐cost form of credit, yet they remain a popular financial tool used by a significant proportion of Americans. Use of these loans varies significantly across social groups. Black households in particular are more than twice as likely to use payday lending as white households. Explanations for households’ decision to use payday loans remain disputed. Some scholars argue that poor financial literacy is a major driver of payday borrowing. Others propose instead that payday loans are a form of credit of last resort used after depleting higher quality sources of credit. In this article, I argue these explanations are incomplete and miss the racialized nature of payday lending. Payday lending is a form of predatory inclusion: it provides households experiencing exclusion from consumer credit markets with a needed source of credit but under conditions that jeopardize long‐term benefits of access. Given historical and contemporary patterns of financial exclusion, this process entails disproportionate reliance on payday lending by black households. Models using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances provide support for both the predatory inclusion and the credit exhaustion explanations. Predatory inclusion, however, explains the largest portion of racial disparities in payday loan use.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVESThis study examines high medical spending among younger, midlife, and older households.RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODSWe investigate high medical spending using data from the 2010 through March 2018 Consumer Expenditures Surveys (n = 92,951). We classify and describe high medical spenders relative to others within three age groups (household heads age 25-44, 45-64, and 65+) using finite mixture models and multinomial logistic regression, respectively. We then use hierarchical linear models to estimate the effects of high medical spending on nonmedical spending.RESULTSAmong younger households, high medical spending is positively associated with higher education and increased spending on housing and food. Among older households, high medical spending is associated with lower education and decreased nonmedical spending.DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONSEarlier in the life course, high medical spending is more likely to indicate an investment in future household well-being, while at older ages, high medical spending is likely to indicate medical consumption.

Dual-process models are increasingly popular in sociology as a framework for theorizing the role of automatic cognition in shaping social behavior. However, empirical studies using dual-process models often rely on ad hoc measures such as forced-choice surveys, observation, and interviews whose relationships to underlying cognitive processes are not fully established. In this article, we advance dual-process research in sociology by (1) proposing criteria for measuring automatic cognition, and (2) assessing the empirical performance of two popular measures of automatic cognition developed by psychologists. We compare the ability of the Brief Implicit Association Test (BIAT), the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP), and traditional forced-choice measures to predict process-pure estimates of automatic influences on individuals’ behavior during a survey task. Results from three studies focusing on politics, morality, and racial attitudes suggest the AMP provides the most valid and consistent measure of automatic cognitive processes. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for sociological practice.

Raphael Charron-Chenier and Louise Seamster on debt and social inequality.

Although 169 Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) have been submitted up to June 2016, there is still around 1.2-1.7 Gillion tons’ CO2 emission gap in 2030 to realize the 2 °C target. The main objectives of this paper are to analyze the significance and feasibility of conducting a sectoral approach as complement to cover the emission gap on the base of INDC framework. The scenario analysis in this paper take three key sectors, electricity, iron and steel (IST) and cement, into consideration. The results affirmed the earlier judgment that additional sectoral reduction in the electricity sector could significantly reduce global CO2 emissions. As a result, this study suggests developing consistent sectoral targets for the electricity sector together with the pledged INDC targets. To conduct this sectoral approach, at least 4070.7 million dollars of extra expenditure are required from developed countries to cover the loss of developing countries, but the results of this investment could be as much as 154 million tons’ CO2 reductions. This paper also concludes with suggestions such as aggressive global mitigation pledges and deeper international cooperation on sectoral technology.

Sociologists of consumption focus primarily on understanding the determinants and consequences of social variation in tastes. Patterns of variation in actual purchases, however, remain relatively unexplored. In this paper, the author proposes a framework for studying household expenditures. Drawing on the work of Mary Douglas, the author proposes a classification of goods and services into four spending bundles that are defined in relation to their contribution to social reproduction strategies. The author first tests the construct validity of the classification using household spending data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey. The author then examines the relationship between cultural capital and patterns of actual spending. In contrast to expectations derived from the sociology of consumption, the author finds that cultural capital is only weakly associated with how households actually spend their money. Overall, this suggests that sociologists need to incorporate issues of spending into the predominantly cultural focus of much consumption research.

Medical expenditures represent a major financial burden that can hinder families’ ability to acquire other goods and services. How patterns of out-of-pocket medical expenditures vary across black and white households, however, remains unclear. Because blacks have poorer health than whites on average, one could assume that black households experience greater medical spending burdens than socioeconomically similar white households. Research on racial disparities in access to health services, however, suggests that blacks are less likely to receive medical care than whites with similar medical needs. Barriers to healthcare access and utilization could entail lower out-of-pocket medical spending for black households, despite their greater medical needs. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, this paper examines patterns of out-of-pocket healthcare spending for black and white households. By comparing households across socioeconomic status, insurance status, and age, we demonstrate that black households consistently spend less on medical care than white households do. These trends are consistent with pervasive barriers to healthcare access and utilization for blacks relative to whites and suggest that policy interventions aimed at alleviating health inequality should not focus on subsidies and monetary incentives alone.

Differences in consumption patterns are usually treated as a matter of preferences. In this article, the authors examine consumption from a structural perspective and argue that black households face unique constraints restricting their ability to acquire important goods and services. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys, the authors examine racial differences in total spending and in spending on major categories of goods and services (food, transportation, utilities, housing, health care, and entertainment). The authors also capture heterogeneous effects of racial stratification across class by modeling racial consumption gaps across household income levels. The results show that black households tend to have lower levels of total spending than their white counterparts and that these disparities tend to persist across income levels. Overall, these analyses indicate that racial disparities in consumption exist independently of other economic disparities and may be a key unexamined factor in the reproduction of racial inequality.

Analyses of the recent surge in racial wealth inequality have tended to focus on changes in asset holdings. Debt patterns, by contrast, have remained relatively unexplored. Using 2001-2013 data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), we show that after peaking in 2007, debt levels for most debt types had returned to pre-financial crisis levels for blacks and whites by 2013. The primary exception to this is education debt, on which this paper focuses. We show that educational debt has increased substantially for blacks relative to whites in the past decade. We also show that this increase in debt is not attributable to differences in educational attainment across racial groups. These trends, we argue, reflect a process of predatory inclusion, where lenders and financial actors offer needed services to black households, but on exploitative terms that limit or eliminate their long-term benefits. Predatory inclusion, we propose, is one of the mechanisms behind the persistence of racial inequality in contemporary markets.

Differences in consumption patterns are usually treated as a matter of preferences. In this article, the authors examine consumption from a structural perspective and argue that black households face unique constraints restricting their ability to acquire important goods and services. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys, the authors examine racial differences in total spending and in spending on major categories of goods and services (food, transportation, utilities, housing, health care, and entertainment). The authors also capture heterogeneous effects of racial stratification across class by modeling racial consumption gaps across household income levels. The results show that black households tend to have lower levels of total spending than their white counterparts and that these disparities tend to persist across income levels. Overall, these analyses indicate that racial disparities in consumption exist independently of other economic disparities and may be a key unexamined factor in the reproduction of racial inequality.