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Conley’s Pecking Order:Inequality Starts at Home
• In explaining economic inequality in America, sibling differences represent about ¾ of all differences between individuals.
• Put another way, only one-quarter of all income inequality is between families. The remaining 75 % is within families.
Conley’s Pecking Order:The Central Question
• Why is there a pecking order among American families and how does it work?
• What explains intra-familial differences in income and attainment?
Conley’s Pecking Order:Possible Explanations
Genetics[Gender-specific] birth orderParenting
The Pecking Order:Conley’s Explanation
• Family size is what matters because parental time, attention, and money are fixed pies and each claim on a slice means less for someone else.
• Birth order matters, but not by shaping personalities which in turn shape socio-economic outcomes; rather it mediates family trauma.
The Pecking Order:Contribution
• Challenges the perceived split between individual, personality-based explanations of sibling differences and sociological ones.
• Pecking order or status hierarchy
emerges from the interaction between individual-level and structural factors.
The Pecking Order:Implications
• What do sibling disparities indicate? According to Conley, class identity is ever changing and not necessarily shared between siblings.
• Family is not a haven in a heartless
capitalist world or a shelter from its winds, but a part of them.
Conley’s Pecking Order:The Central Question
• Why is there a pecking order among American families and how does it work?
• What explains intra-familial differences in income and attainment?
The Pecking Order:Data
• U.S. Census
• Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)
• General Social Survey (GSS)
• NYU In-depth Interviews