Doctoral Dissertation Research: Within-Group Inequality

收入不平等的加剧迅速成为美国社会关注的中心问题之一。虽然这种增长重新引起了学术界和公众对不平等的原因和后果的兴趣，但不平等增长的性质对社会科学家和政策制定者构成了挑战。这种当代上升趋势的一个核心组成部分是群体内部的不平等，即个人和家庭之间出现的工资和收入不平等，这些人在其他方面与社会科学家通常研究的特征相似，如性别、种族、教育程度、家庭构成和工作特征。该项目通过将个人生命历程和社会背景的结构和时间特征纳入群体内不平等分析，审查了群体内收入不平等的加剧。本论文将有助于识别影响群体内不平等增长的机制，并使用三个层面的分析来批判性地检验以往对群体内不平等的解释：个人层面通过考察生命轨迹，国家层面通过比较美国和其他富裕西方国家的群体内不平等，以及通过研究群体内不平等与当地劳动力市场特征的关系来考察中(中)层面。统计分析将使用三个高质量的数据集：收入动态小组研究、卢森堡收入研究和美国人口普查微观数据，并结合多个二手背景数据来源。该项目还将使用最先进的统计方法技术来检验假设，包括异方差回归模型、重复测量多水平模型和增长轨迹模型。这些结果将对现有的群体内不平等理论进行批判性评估。本论文还将把群体内不平等的研究扩展到纵向和多层次的框架，允许将宏观社会学理论融入到群体内不平等的研究中。该项目不仅将为社会科学家提供理论和方法上的贡献，还将为政策制定者提供更广泛的高质量信息。

The growth of income inequality has fast become one of the central concerns of American society. While this growth has renewed scholarly and popular interest in the causes and consequences of inequality, the nature of inequality growth presents a challenge to social scientists and policy makers. A central component of this contemporary upswing is within-group inequality, or inequality of wages and income occurring among individuals and households who are otherwise similar on those characteristics which social scientists typically study, such as sex, race, educational attainment, household composition, and job characteristics. This project examines the growth of within-group income inequality by incorporating structural and temporal characteristics of the individual life course and the social context into within-group inequality analysis. This dissertation will help identify mechanisms influencing the growth of within-group inequality as well as critically examine previous explanations of within-group inequality using three levels of analysis: the individual level by examining life course trajectories, the country level by comparing within-group inequality between the United States and other rich western countries, and the meso (middle) level by examining within-group inequality in relation to characteristics of local labor markets. Statistical analysis will be conducted using three high quality datasets: the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Luxembourg Income Study, and US Census microdata in conjunction with multiple secondary sources of contextual data. The project also will use state-of-the-art statistical methodological techniques to test hypotheses including heteroscedastic regression models, repeated measures multilevel models, and growth trajectory models. Results will provide a critical assessment of existing theories of within-group inequality. This dissertation will also extend the study of within-group inequality toward a longitudinal and multilevel framework, allowing for the incorporation of macrosociological theories into the study of within-group inequality. The project will not only provide theoretical and methodological contributions for social scientists, but also will provide broader high-quality information for policy makers as well.