baca zinn ch04-lecture

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Diversity in Families, Ninth EditionMaxine Baca Zinn • D. Stanley Eitzen • Barbara Wells

Diversity In Families

Chapter FourMacro Forces Affecting Families: The Economy, Immigration, and Aging

NINTH EDITION




Chapter Four Overview

• Globalization and the Structural Transformation of the Economy and Families

• The Transformation of the Economy Reshaped by the Great Recession

• The New Immigration and the Changing Racial Landscape

• The Aging of Society




Globalization and Structural Transformation

• Forces Transforming the U.S.- 1.) New Technologies Contribute to

Surge in Economy

- 2.) Globalization of the Economy

- 3.) Change from Manufacturing to Knowledge-Based Corporations – U.S. corporations continue to move in the direction of the production of knowledge




Forces Transforming the U.S. Continued:

• Forces Transforming the U.S.- 4.) Capital Flight - the movement of

corporate monies from one investment to another, which takes on multiple forms:

a.) Overseas Investment by U.S. Firms b.) Relocation of Businesses c.) Mergers and Takeovers




The New Economy and Families

• Changing Nature of Jobs and Job Insecurity:- Downsizing in Corporate America has

been occurring for over 30 years and the number of parents experiencing long-term unemployment nearly tripled between 2000 and 2003.




Structural Changes

• In the 20th century manufacturing replaced agriculture as the main employment in the US.

• Another shift took place when the information age started and there was a shift from manufacturing to information based technology.

• The US has lost more than one fifth of its factory jobs since 2000.




The New Economy and Families

• Benefits Insecurity:- The number of defined-benefit pension

plans has plunged from 112,200 in 1985 to 29,700 in 2004.

• The Shrinking Middle-Class: - The trend of mobility into the middle-

class occurred after World War II and peaked in 1973.




Offshoring and Outsourcing

• Offshoring is when a company moves its production to another country, producing the same products in the same way but with cheaper labor.

• Outsourcing refers to taking some specific task that a company was doing in house and transferring it to an overseas company to save money.




Offshoring and Outsourcing

• Outsourcing has three roots:- 1.) There is a worldwide communications

revolution brought on by the internet.

- 2.) There is a supply of qualified workers in English speaking countries such as India.

- 3.) These workers are willing to work for one-fifth or less the salary of comparable US workers.




The Great Recession

• Millions of Americans lost jobs due to industry moving overseas.

• Many companies reduced or eliminated their benefits like health insurance, and retirement.

• The transformation of the economy marginalized millions, increased unemployment, drove social mobility downward and made many millions insecure about their jobs, health care and retirement.




The Great Recession

• Many Americans bought homes for the first time during this tough financial time but they didn’t read the fine print. The terms of some mortgages were low interest rates for the first two years and then the interest rate went up.

• The unstable housing market mixed with the reckless and irresponsible deal-making on Wall Street made the economy more unstable.




The Ensuing Economic Crisis

• In 2007 all of this instability converged to create a “perfect storm” of economic devastation.

• Many major financial firms went bankrupt.

• The stock market dropped drastically. • Credit dried up. • Business slowed both here and

abroad.




Job Insecurity

• Six million American workers lost their jobs from late 2007 to May 2009.

• The official government’s unemployment rate jumped from 4.6 percent to 9.4 percent.

• There are important differences as far as unemployment due to race, class and gender.

• Those with less education and people of color had higher unemployment rates than white people.




Reasons for the Shrinking Middle Class

• Stagnant or Declining Wages

• The Increasing Cost of a New Car

• The Increasing Cost of Housing

• The Increased Cost of a College Education




Financial Decline

• The average inflation adjusted income for workers is lower now than it was in the 1970’s.- This is especially true for hourly wage

employees.

• Household wealth dropped $11.1 trillion.

• Stock Market value declined by $7.3 trillion.

• Americans lost over $1 trillion in their retirement accounts in 2008.




Housing Woes

• The value of homes peaked in 2006, but by then many homeowners were on the financial edge as they purchased overvalued homes assuming that their value would raise even more.

• When the housing bubble burst, many people lost their homes due to foreclosure.

• In early 2009 nearly one in eight mortgage holders were either delinquent or in foreclosure.




Housing Woes

• Renters are not immune to housing problems.

• Many were evicted when the owners of properties were foreclosed on.

• Since homeowners lost their homes, they became renters, thus driving up rents in some areas.

• Some renters are paying over 50% of their income in rent (the government considers anything over 30% unaffordable).




Personal Bankruptcies

• From March 2008 to March 2009 about 1.2 million debtors filed bankruptcy.

• A major source of bankruptcy is the inability to pay for catastrophic health care needs.

• Employers have increasingly cut back on health care for their employees.

• One tactic by employers is to hire workers as independent contractors because these workers do not receive company-paid benefits such as health insurance.




Downward Social Mobility

• The middle class peaked in 1973 but since has shrunk.- Due to globalization, rising personal

debt, unemployment, and the recession of 2007.

• Costs for health care, college, consumer goods and transportation continue to rise.




Hunger

• The poorest suffer the harshest economic declines.

• The safety net of welfare was cut due to welfare reform in 1996.

• The number of families receiving cash assistance is the lowest it has been in forty years despite the harsh economic climate.

• There has been a surge in the number of people who are hungry in the US as the poor try to cope with the harsh economy.




The New Homeless

• About 40 percent of the homeless are families, usually single mothers and their children.

• According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, as many as 3.4 million Americans are predicted to be homeless in 2009.- This is a 35% increase since the

recession of 2007 started.




Other Effects

• The divorce rate has risen, possibly due to stress over money woes.

• Delaying marriage is common during tough economic times – people feel they cannot afford to get married and have a family, thus fertility rates have dropped.

• Individual self esteem can be hurt due to dropping down from the middle class.

• People are moving in with relatives when they lose a home so family form is changing.




Other Effects

• At times, a married couple may continue to live together even after a divorce due to not being able to afford separate residences.

• More grandparents are raising children than before.

• In some families women are becoming the primary bread winners.

• Many families have adjusted their lifestyles downward and consumption of consumer goods has shrunk.




Other Effects

• People are doing things themselves that they used to pay others to do such as landscaping.

• More people are keeping their “stuff” longer thus intake at landfills has dropped 30% or more.

• Pawnshops and consignment stores are on the rise, as are thrift stores.

• Vacation travel is down.• People are cutting back on entertainment.




Immigration and the Changing Racial Landscape

• The New Immigration:- 90 percent of immigrants are from non-

European countries, mostly Latin America and Asia.

• Increasing Diversity:- The U.S. is shifting from an Anglo-White

society to a society with three large racial ethnic minorities: African American, Latino, and Asian.




Figure 4.1Foreign-Born Population: 1900-2006 (millions)

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1993. We the Americans . . . Foreign Born (September):1; and Martin, Philip, and Gottfried Zurcher, 2008. “Managing Migration: The Global Challenge.” Population Bulletin 63 (March): 9.




Immigration and the Changing Racial Landscape

• California has a majority minority which is going to become more visible in the near future.

• Racial minorities are increasing faster than the majority population.

• African Americans have lost their position as the most numerous racial minority.

• Immigration now accounts for a large portion of the population growth.

• New patterns of immigration are changing the racial composition of society.




Structural Diversity of Immigrant Families

• Most new immigrants do not speak English.

• Some new immigrants live with people who have been in the US for some time as a way to cope with being in a new environment.

• Some families immigrate as intact units while others are transnational families – families whose members are living in two countries.

• Sometimes children immigrate without their parents – ”parachute children” arrive to pursue educational opportunities.




Structural Diversity of Immigrant Families

• Latinos:- In 1970 about 1 in 20 Americans were

Latino, now it is 1 in 7.

- There is great diversity within this group – with Mexican immigrants being the largest group.

- Mexicans and Puerto Ricans are the most economically disadvantaged Latino groups.




Figure 4.2Changing Makeup of the U.S. Population

Source: El Nasser, Haya (2008).“U.S. growth sport by 2050.” USA Today (February 12): 3A.




Latino Immigrant Families

• Latino families are thought to have strong kinship networks, although this depends on social conditions.

• Latino families are typically viewed as settings of traditional patriarchy because of machismo, however research has found the contrary, that there is considerable variation in family decision making.




Asian Americans

• Asian Americans now make up more than 1/3 of all legal immigrants into the US.

• This is a very diverse group of individuals from different countries.

• The number of divorces for Asians is lower than the US average.

• Asian immigrants typically have a higher education than the national average.

• Traditional gender inequality is related to different earning power and educational gaps between men and women.




Asian Americans

• To summarize, Asian American families, like all families in US Society are the consequence of the member’s daily interactions with each other and the outside world.

• Their experiences are constructed by social and historical situations.




The Effects of Immigration on Immigrant Families

• Ethnic Identity: - Assimilation is the process by which an ethnic

group adopts the culture of the larger society.

- One indicator of Assimilation is language. Foreign language speakers grew in the 1990s and by 2000 slightly less than one in five people living in America spoke a language other than English at home.

- New immigrants may be blamed for social problems and resistance to assimilation transformations. As a result, macrostructural forces like racism and economic order are ignored.





• New immigrants have four options:- 1.) Blend into US culture as quickly as

possible

- 2.) Resist the new ways by being adversarial toward the dominant society

- 3.) Resist the new ways by emphasizing ethnic ties

- 4.) Move toward some bicultural pattern





• Immigration and Agency:- Immigration, when freely chosen, is an act of

social agency.

• Typically new immigrants face hostility from their new host country who may fear them as competitors.

• Commonly migrants move to an area of the country where they already have friends or relatives to cope with the new way of life.




The Effects of Immigration on Family Dynamics

• To become a naturalized citizen usually an immigrant needs a sponsor, thus family members tend to immigrate to the same areas.- This is called “chain migration” when

one family member moves first, followed by the rest of the family.




The Effects of Immigration on Family Dynamics

• Family members who have assimilated may feel distant from their family when the remainder of the family first migrates.- This is especially true in the case where

children immigrate first – children tend to adapt more quickly, thus they may be used to life in the US when other family members are not.




Undocumented Immigrants

• These are often young male laborers who come to the US to work and leave their families behind.

• Typically they send money home to their families.

• They may have the remainder of their family join them in the US when they are established.




Gender Dynamics

• Immigrants arrive in their host country carrying with them the traditions, norms and culture of their homeland.- This might include established patriarchal

systems of gender interactions.

• If immigrant women go to work outside the home it can cause conflicts within the relationship.

• This may reduce the “power” between men and women.




The New Second Generation

• There were more than 16 million children under the age of 18 living in immigrant families in 2007 (Mather 2009).- These children account for 22% of children in

the US.

- They are the fastest growing segment of the population.

- This generation tends to be fluent in English.




The New Second Generation

• Because parents become dependant on children’s English speaking, the parent as an authority figure is sometimes lost.

• Children in this situation also don’t often see their parent’s experiences in the old country as being relevant to their experiences in the US.

• They may start to view their own ethnic heritage as deficient.

• This generation may clash with their parents over traditions such as arranged marriages.




Elderly Immigrants

• Elderly immigrants are usually legal immigrants into the US.

• Typically they are poor and do not speak English.

• They are dependent on family members for support, housing and dealing with the new society.




Elderly Immigrants

• The dependence of the elders on their children works against traditional respect for elders.

• The elders often become submissive to the children.




The Aging of Society

• Demographics:- A falling birth rate and advances in

medicine combine to make the 65-and-older category the fastest growing segment of the population.

• Growth of the Elderly Population: - It is estimated that by 2030 there will be

8.5 million people aged 85 and over and by 2050, it is expected to reach 18.9 million.




Figure 4.3U.S. Population Age 85 and Older, 1900-2050(in millions)

Source: Hobbs, Frank B. with Bonnie L Damon (1996). “65+ in the United States.” Current Population Reports, P23-290: 2–8.




Consequences of an Aging Society

• Economic Resources:- Economic resources are distributed unequally

among the elderly; elderly persons of color are disproportionately poor.

• Living Arrangements:- These vary by age, sex, race, and marital

status; residents of nursing homes are typically over 75, female, white, and widowed.




Consequences of an Aging Society

• Paying for Health Care:- The major difficulty with Medicare is

insufficient funding which leaves elders paying a considerable share of their medical costs.

• Medicare:- Began in 1965- People over 65 are automatically

enrolled- Paid for by taxes




Problems with Medicare

• It is now insufficiently financed to meet the needs of the elderly.

• Only about half of the elderly person’s health care is covered.

• Physicians feel the program does not pay them enough, therefore it may be difficult for an elderly person to find medical care.




Role Transitions

• The elderly in society encounter a number of role transitions such as:- Retirement – most people retire between

ages 60-70.- For some people, retirement is a difficult

stage – they don’t feel as useful as they used to.

- Retirement may also mean less income for some elderly.




Role Transitions

• The elderly in society encounter a number of role transitions such as:- Widowhood

The probability of becoming a widow or widower increases with age.

Widowhood is a social disruption and seems to be more difficult for men than for women.

Widows are less depressed and less stressed than widowers.




Role Transitions

• The elderly in society encounter a number of role transitions such as:- From Independence to Dependence

Adulthood is a time of financial and social independence from others.

However, toward the end of life, the elderly may become dependent on their adult children and others for simply getting from place to place

This shift is often difficult for the elderly person and his or her caregivers.




Role Transitions

• The elderly in society encounter a number of role transitions such as:- Impending Death

The median age of death in the US is 78. The leading cause of death is heart disease. Elders with terminal illnesses become

progressively more dependent on others for their care.

Hospitalization or nursing home placement may occur at this time.




Responses by the Elderly

• Human Agency:- The elderly may become isolated.

- The elderly may be living on less than enough income.

- Some researchers argue that the elderly withdraw from social relationships as they respond to the aging process (disengagement).

The majority of the elderly, however, remain active.




Summary

• The consequence of these three forces; the structural transformation of the economy, the changing racial composition because of immigration and the aging of society – is their effects on family forms:- Dual Working Families

- Transitional Families

- Beanpole Structure Families

- Elderly living with adult children

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