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Author: Swidler, Ann
Resulting in 2 citations.
1. Fischer, Claude S.
Hout, Michael
Jankowski, Martin Sanchez
Lucas, Samuel
Swidler, Ann
Voss, Kim
Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth
Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1996.
Also: http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/5877.html
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Ethnic Differences; Ethnic Groups; I.Q.; Intelligence; Intelligence Tests; Poverty; Racial Differences; Racial Equality/Inequality; Racial Studies

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The strongest recent statement that inequality in America is the natural result of a free market came in "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life" by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. These authors argued that intelligence determines how well people do in life, and the rich are rich largely because they are intelligent, the poor largely because they are not, and the middle class in middle circumstances mainly because they are of middling intelligence. The "Bell Curve" also attributed the strong connection of inequality to race and ethnicity to the fact that minorities, by nature, are not as intelligent as the dominant society. This book uses the data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth used by Herrnstein and Murray to demonstrate that, contrary to their conclusions, inequality in America is not the inevitable result of free markets operating on natural intelligence, but that it is a social construction molded by social environment and conscious social policy. Americans have created inequality and they maintain it. Specific chapters examine arguments of "The Bell Curve" and show that inequality can be changed, and has, in fact, been changed to some extent already. (Contains 3 tables, 24 figures, and 446 references.) (SLD) (Abstract from ERIC)
Bibliography Citation
Fischer, Claude S., Michael Hout, Martin Sanchez Jankowski, Samuel Lucas, Ann Swidler and Kim Voss. Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1996..
2. Fischer, Claude S.
Hout, Michael
Jankowski, Martin Sanchez
Lucas, Samuel
Swidler, Ann
Voss, Kim
Arum, Richard
Response to Nielsen's Review of Inequality by Design
Social Forces 76,4 (June 1998): 1539-1543.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3005844
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Cognitive Ability; Intelligence

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This article is a response to François Nielsen's critical review of the book "Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth," by Claude S. Fischer, Michael Hout, Martin Sánchez Jankowski, Samuel R. Lucas, Ann Swidler and Kim Voss. According to the authors, first Nielsen largely ignores the central argument of the book, one that is stated regularly: Explaining who gets ahead and who falls behind in the race for success explains nothing about systems of inequality. Second, Nielsen focuses on one chapter in IBD: chapter 4, "Who Wins, Who Loses?" It examines the "Bell Curve's" statistical analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. In defending "The Bell Curve" on this point, Nielsen misrepresents the analysis. He also slides in a critical but dubious assumption: that the AFQT is a measure of innate "cognitive ability" or "intelligence." Nielsen has two major criticisms of the re-modeling the NLSY data. First, he states that the corrected models fail to erase the AFQT score as a significant predictor of poverty. This is irrelevant. The issue is whether the AFQT score "dominates" other factors in explaining individual outcomes. Second, Nielsen charges that we use control variables especially years of schooling that are effects of "cognitive ability" and so bias the models given by the authors against the AFQT predictor.
Bibliography Citation
Fischer, Claude S., Michael Hout, Martin Sanchez Jankowski, Samuel Lucas, Ann Swidler, Kim Voss and Richard Arum. "Response to Nielsen's Review of Inequality by Design." Social Forces 76,4 (June 1998): 1539-1543.