Baca zinn ch04-lecture

Diversity In Families
NINTH EDITION

Chapter Four
Macro Forces Affecting
Families: The Economy,
Immigration, and Aging

Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Diversity in Families, Ninth Edition
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458
Maxine Baca Zinn • D. Stanley Eitzen • Barbara Wells
All rights reserved.

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 4.1
Foreign-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 4.2
Changing 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.

Immigrant Families
• 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


Immigrant Families
• 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 4.3
U.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

- 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

- 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

- 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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