Premium
Race, Gender, and Educational Advantage in the Inner City
Author(s) -
LaVeist Thomas A.,
McDonald Katrina Bell
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
social science quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.482
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1540-6237
pISSN - 0038-4941
DOI - 10.1111/1540-6237.00117
Subject(s) - inner city , white (mutation) , disadvantage , race (biology) , educational attainment , neglect , life course approach , social class , demography , black male , life chances , gerontology , psychology , gender studies , sociology , developmental psychology , medicine , political science , socioeconomics , biochemistry , chemistry , psychiatry , law , gene
Objective . In this study we examine race differences in the effect of childhood in an urban inner–city community on educational attainment in adulthood. Methods . We examine a cohort of African American and white individuals born in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the same hospital. Our analysis examines a set of individual, family, and community characteristics for the respondents at three time points in their life course, birth, childhood, and adulthood. Results . We find that black men and women are substantially more likely than their white counterparts to graduate from high school, and that black women are more likely than white men, black men, and white women to graduate from high school and college. Conclusions . We conclude that social policy to eradicate urban disadvantage must not shift its focus to the plight of poor whites to the neglect of African Americans. Rather, we urge that inner–city white children be “drawn out of the shadows” of social research and that the uniqueness of race, class, and gender intersections realized in the inner city be brought to bear.