D2.Soc.16.9-12: Interpreting the Effects of Inequality on Groups and Individuals

Overview

Lesson Procedure

60-70 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction20 minutes
3. Guided Practice15 minutes
4. Independent Practice15 minutes
5. Closure5-10 minutes

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "Two invented schools: at School A, 40 percent of students say they have a quiet place to study at home; at School B, 85 percent do. Name one way the difference might affect each school as a whole, and one way it might affect a single student. Can you tell from these numbers whether a particular student at School A has a quiet place to study?"

   Record answers in two columns, the school as a group and one student. Then take a show of hands on the last question; the answer is no. Tell students that today's skill is keeping those two columns apart while seeing how they connect: a rate describes a group, and a life story describes a person, and an interpretation of inequality needs both without confusing them.

2. Direct Instruction20 minutes

   Key terms. Social inequality is the unequal distribution of resources, opportunities and power among groups. Life chances are the likelihood that members of a group will have good health, schooling, work and a long life; sociologists use the term to describe groups, not to predict one person. A rate is a count divided by the size of the group, such as deaths per 1,000 births; rates let groups of different sizes be compared. A mechanism is the path by which a cause has its effect, such as unpaved streets spreading disease. The ecological fallacy is the error of reading a group's rate as a fact about each member of the group.

   Reading 1. In 1915 the U.S. Children's Bureau, a federal agency in the Department of Labor, published a study of every baby born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1911. Source 1 is from the letter that opens the report, signed by the bureau's chief, Julia C. Lathrop. Read for two questions: why does the bureau think infant deaths are worth counting, and what kind of causes did it look for?

   1Infant mortality is a subject of profound social importance. The modern view has ceased to be fatalistic; infant mortality is now regarded as a preventable waste, injurious to survivors as well as destructive to infants, and cruelly increasing the burden of rearing a family. Sir Arthur Newsholme, the great English authority, has said, "Infant mortality is the most sensitive index we possess of social welfare and of sanitary administration, especially under urban conditions." Nationally, the United States has as yet no means of measuring the extent and significance of its infant mortality. If it were practicable, it would be illuminating to visit each one of the 2,500,000 children who, it is estimated, are born in this country yearly, and to take note of the varying social and economic conditions under which some 300,000 of them die and the others survive. As this is manifestly impossible, the nearest approach is to consider certain communities typical of the whole, and it is believed that in the course of a few years' study such data can be presented as will give the United States a fairly adequate measure of the conditions under which American-born infants survive or perish, and of the possibilities of modifying those conditions by local action.

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   2This study considers all the babies born in Johnstown within a single calendar year. Since the work was begun in January, 1913, it was necessary to select the year 1911 as the latest in which all babies born could have attained a full year of life.

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   3Above all, the bureau wishes to express its obligation to the mothers of Johnstown, without whose generous understanding and help the inquiry could not have been conducted. Their good will is evidenced by the fact that, out of 1,553 mothers visited, only two refused information.

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   4The emphasis of the inquiry, as shown throughout the text, was upon certain of the more obvious economic, social, and civic factors which have surrounded the lives of the children of Johnstown born within the given year. Civic action can remedy defective sewerage and scavenger systems and dirty unpaved streets which are instrumental in creating conditions that endanger the lives of infants. The extension of city water to all houses; improved methods for sewage disposal, garbage collections, and general scavenging; the paving of streets and inhabited alleys; the widening of alleys; the improved grading of streets and alleys; the relief of house and lot congestion; the abolition of wells and yard privies; sewer connection for all houses; the abatement of the smoke nuisance — all of these are needed improvements for the infant health and the general health of Johnstown.

   Reading 2. Source 2 is from the body of the report, written by Emma Duke. Two terms to know: an infant mortality rate is the number of babies who die before their first birthday per 1,000 live births, and born in wedlock means born to married parents. In 1915, "native" meant mothers born in the United States and "foreign" meant mothers born abroad; today we would say U.S.-born and immigrant mothers. The table under the source was built for this page from the report's Table 30.

   1A grouping of babies according to the income of the father shows the greatest incidence of infant deaths where wages are lowest, and the smallest incidence where they are highest, indicating clearly the relation between low wages and ill health and infant deaths. For all live babies born in wedlock the infant mortality rate is 130.7. It rises to 255.7 when the father earns less than $521 a year or less than $10 a week, and falls to 84 when he earns $1,200 or more or if his earnings are "ample." The variation in the infant mortality rate from one earnings group to another is not perfectly regular and consistent, but if any two or more consecutive groups are combined an invariable lowering of the infant mortality rate from one such combined group to that next higher results.

   2"Ample" as used in this report has a somewhat arbitrary meaning. When information concerning the father's earnings was not available and the family showed no evidences of actual poverty, the word "ample" was used. If no information concerning earnings was available when, on the other hand, the family was clearly in a state of abject poverty, then the income was tabulated as "Under $521."

   3In considering the babies of native and of foreign mothers separately in the foregoing table, similar variations in mortality rates according to earnings of father are found, although the foreign infant death rate is higher in each group. The foreign are less numerous both actually and relatively in the higher wage groups.

   4The foreigners of a given wage group almost always live in a poorer neighborhood than the natives earning the same amount.

   Infant deaths by father's annual earnings, Johnstown, Pa., babies born in 1911 (built for this page from Table 30 of the 1915 Children's Bureau report, all married mothers; each rate rechecked as deaths per 1,000 live births)

   Father's annual earnings	Live births	Deaths in first year	Infant mortality rate (per 1,000)
   Under $521	219	56	255.7
   $521 to $624	165	26	157.6
   $625 to $779	224	24	107.1
   $780 to $899	161	23	142.9
   $900 to $1,199	138	14	101.4
   $1,200 or more	48	4	83.3
   "Ample" (see Source 2, paragraph 2)	476	40	84.0
   All groups	1,431	187	130.7

   • Reading a rate: Table 30 and Source 2, paragraph 1

     What does the rate of 255.7 for fathers earning under $521 mean, and how was it computed?

     Result: Of 219 babies born in this group, 56 died before age one. The rate is 56 / 219 x 1,000, about 255.7 deaths per 1,000 live births: roughly one baby in four. This describes an effect on a group, the whole set of families in the lowest earnings band, not a prediction for any one family.

   • How the effect travels: Source 1, paragraph 4

     Use the list of remedies in Source 1 to explain how unequal income could reach babies through shared conditions.

     Result: The letter names "defective sewerage and scavenger systems and dirty unpaved streets" as conditions that "endanger the lives of infants," and calls for city water and "sewer connection for all houses." The letter does not say which streets lacked these services. If, as Source 2, paragraph 4 reports for immigrant families, lower-paid families tended to live in poorer neighborhoods, then the effect works through the neighborhood: every family on a street without sewers shares the risk, whatever its own habits. That last step is an inference to test, not a finding of Source 1.

   • A second pathway: Source 2, paragraph 4

     Explain what the report adds when it compares mothers born abroad with U.S.-born mothers at the same earnings.

     Result: The report says the foreign-born "almost always live in a poorer neighborhood than the natives earning the same amount." So two families with the same wage could face different conditions. Earnings are one cause the report examines; where a group is able to live is another, and the two overlap.

   • From a group rate to one family (invented example)

     Invented example: in an invented town, the rate for one group is 200 deaths per 1,000 births. A visitor says, "So any baby born into that group will probably die." Interpret the rate correctly.

     Result: 200 per 1,000 means that 800 of every 1,000 babies in the group survive their first year, so a given baby will most likely live. The rate shows that the group faces a much higher risk than others; it does not settle the outcome for any one family. Reading the rate as a fact about each member is the ecological fallacy.

   Close the segment: Source 2, paragraph 1 says the figures show "clearly the relation between low wages and ill health and infant deaths." Is a relation the same as a cause? Keep the question open; Guided Practice and the quiz return to it.

3. Guided Practice15 minutes

   Use Diagram 1 and the table. Work through the steps together.

   1. Check one rate. Recompute the rate for $900 to $1,199 from its births and deaths, and say in words what it means.
   2. Read the footnote. Source 2, paragraph 2 explains the "ample" group. Who was placed in it, and who was placed in "Under $521" without a reported wage? Discuss how these rules could affect each row's rate.
   3. Small rows. Find the row with the fewest births. Why is a rate built on very few births less stable than the others? (Elsewhere in Table 30, the report declines to compute a rate for any group with fewer than 50 births.)
   4. Hunter's view. Read Source 3 together. Robert Hunter published Poverty in 1904 and writes about New York City. Mark each of his claims G (about a group) or I (about what happens inside one child's life), and circle any number he gives. Ask: where does each number come from?

   1These children come from those homes of poverty in which the irregular, hand-to-mouth existence of the parents exercises a blighting influence over the lives of the children. The effects of poverty are nowhere else so clearly seen. Poverty's misery invariably falls heaviest upon the weakest. The poorest children are several inches smaller, considerably lighter, and in all ways less developed than the children of well-to-do parents. [...] But the poverty of any family is likely to be most serious at the very time when the children most need nurture, when they are most dependent, and when they are obtaining the only education which they are ever to receive. Guidance and supervision of the parents are impossible because they must work; the nurture is insufficient because there are too many hungry mouths to feed; learning is difficult because hungry stomachs and languid bodies and thin blood are not able to feed the brain. The lack of learning among so many poor children is certainly due, to an important extent, to this cause. There must be thousands — very likely sixty or seventy thousand children — in New York City alone who often arrive at school hungry and unfitted to do well the work required. This curse which poverty lays upon innocent children is an awful one, for it means that they may not grow, that they may not learn, and therefore that they may not be strong enough mentally or physically to overcome the cause of it all, — poverty.

   2Many cities in England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and Italy have been for several years feeding at the schools the poorest children, because they have discovered that underfed children cannot be taught the simplest sums or the most elementary spelling. I have just been reading a large volume — an English report of several hundred pages — on "Underfed School Children." It is doubly sad reading to an American who knows that we have not even made inquiries in this country concerning this aspect of poverty. It is utter folly, from the point of view of learning, to have a compulsory school law which compels children, in that weak physical and mental state which results from poverty, to drag themselves to school and to sit at their desks, day in and day out, for several years, learning little or nothing. If it is a matter of principle in democratic America that every child shall be given a certain amount of instruction, let us render it possible for them to receive it, as monarchial countries have done, by making full and adequate provision for the physical needs of the children who come from the homes of poverty.

   Diagram 2 shows the pathways the three sources describe, from unequal income to effects on groups and on individuals.

4. Independent Practice15 minutes

   Read Source 4, an invented case with invented data. The survey table belongs to it. Two cautions before you start: the survey report does not say how the 400 households in each neighborhood were chosen, so we cannot be sure they represent the neighborhoods; and two individual stories are examples, not a sample.

   1Invented case, written for this page. The city, the survey, the people and every number are invented. The invented city of Carver Point is divided by a rail yard. Households in Eastside, on one side, have a median income about half that of households in Ridge, on the other side. An invented county survey asked 400 households in each neighborhood the same questions; the results are in the table printed with this source. The survey report does not say how the households were chosen.

   2Marisol, 16, lives in Eastside. When her father's hours at a warehouse were cut, she took an 18-hour-a-week job at a grocery store to help pay the rent. She is often tired in her first-period class, and she did not join a free summer engineering program because it met during her shifts. Her counselor connected her with a Saturday tutoring group, and her math grades have held steady.

   3Owen, 16, also lives in Eastside. He does not have a job. He joined the same free summer engineering program, because a neighbor who works at the college drove him there each morning. He says the hardest part of his week is the hour-long bus ride to the nearest library with reliable internet.

   4In a letter to the invented Carver Point Ledger, one reader wrote: "These numbers prove that Eastside teenagers just don't care about school."

   Invented county survey of Carver Point (invented data for Source 4; how households were chosen is not stated)

   Measure	Eastside	Ridge
   Households surveyed	400	400
   Households with a regular doctor or clinic	248	344
   Teenagers aged 15-17 living in surveyed households	180	175
   Of those teenagers: working 15 or more hours a week during the school year	54	21
   Of those teenagers: in a summer academic program last year	27	63

   Task: write one interpretation paragraph with four parts. (1) A group-level effect, stated with a rate you compute from the table. (2) An individual-level effect, with evidence from paragraph 2 or 3. (3) One possible mechanism linking the two. (4) One limitation of the evidence. Use Sources 1-4 for the quiz and homework.

5. Closure5-10 minutes

   Exit ticket: "Write one sentence about an effect of inequality on a group and one about an effect on an individual, each with its evidence. Then write one sentence explaining why the first cannot tell you the second."

   Teacher notes. (1) Sources 1 and 2 use the words of 1915: "native" and "foreign" for U.S.-born and immigrant mothers, and "born in wedlock" and "legitimate" in the table titles. The sentences that follow the excerpt in Source 2 describe immigrant neighborhoods in judgmental language that is now rejected; this page stops before them. (2) Robert Hunter's preface and some other chapters describe a class of poor people as hereditary "degeneracy," a view now rejected; this page uses only the chapter V passage, and the sentence cut from it describes children of parents with alcoholism or tuberculosis in the language of 1904. (3) Hunter's figure of "sixty or seventy thousand children" is his own estimate, and he says no American inquiry had been made; treat it as an estimate. (4) The Johnstown study covers one town and one year of births, and the "ample" and "Under $521" groups were partly assigned by how a family's circumstances looked to the agents (Source 2, paragraph 2). (5) Source 4 is invented. Keep the discussion at group level: do not ask students about their own family's income, jobs or health.

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to Source 1, paragraph 1, why does the bureau study "certain communities typical of the whole" instead of the whole country?

   AVisiting every baby born in the country each year is not possible BLarge cities refused to let the bureau's agents visit their families CInfant deaths in small towns are too rare to count each year DState laws already required each town to report its own rates

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Source 1, paragraph 2 says the study began in January 1913 but chose babies born in 1911. Why?

   AJohnstown first required birth certificates for every baby in that year BThe year 1911 had the largest number of infant deaths in the town CIt was the latest year whose babies could all reach age one DThe bureau wanted only babies born before a flood struck the town

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Source 1, paragraph 3 reports that "out of 1,553 mothers visited, only two refused information." Why does this matter for interpreting the effects the study finds?

   AIt proves that low wages caused every infant death in the town BAlmost all families took part, so no earnings group was missed CIt shows that Johnstown's rates must match every American city DIt means the mothers' answers never had to be checked at all

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Source 1, paragraph 1 quotes Sir Arthur Newsholme: "Infant mortality is the most sensitive index we possess of social welfare." What does the quotation suggest about why the bureau counted infant deaths?

   AInfant deaths were the only deaths that towns kept records of BInfants were the age group least affected by the conditions they lived in CThe bureau mainly wanted to compare Johnstown with English cities DInfant deaths reveal how well a community's conditions serve people

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In the table, the rate for fathers earning under $521 is 255.7, and Source 2, paragraph 1 gives 84 for fathers earning $1,200 or more or "ample." About how many times higher is the lowest group's rate?

   AAbout 1.6 times BAbout 2.0 times CAbout 171.7 times DAbout 3.0 times

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   The table's $1,200 or more row rests on 48 births and 4 deaths, a rate of 83.3. By about how much would that rate change if one more of those babies had died?

   AAbout 2.1 per 1,000 BAbout 20.8 per 1,000 CAbout 83.3 per 1,000 DAbout 104.2 per 1,000

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to Source 2, paragraph 2, why should a reader be careful with the "ample" group?

   ASome families were put in it by appearance, not by reported earnings BIt counted only the babies of mothers who were born outside the country CIt held fewer than 50 births, too few for the report to use a rate DIts numbers came from a different town than the rest of the table

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Source 2, paragraph 3 says foreign-born families "are less numerous both actually and relatively in the higher wage groups." What does the word "relatively" add?

   AForeign-born families were fewer in number but a larger share of those groups BForeign-born families earned more than the report was able to record CAs a share of their own group, too, few reached the higher wage groups DForeign-born families lived farther from the mills than other families

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to Source 3, paragraph 1, when is a family's poverty "likely to be most serious" for its children?

   AWhen the children are old enough to leave school and go to work BWhen children most need nurture and are getting their schooling CWhen the family first moves from the country to the city DWhen the family moves out of a tenement to a better street

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Hunter claims in Source 3, paragraph 1 that "The poorest children are several inches smaller, considerably lighter" than children of well-to-do parents. Which evidence would best test this claim?

    AHeights and weights of many children, measured and compared by income BInterviews with a few teachers about which of their pupils seem small CHunter's own memories of the children he met in New York streets DA count of how many poor children lived in the city that year

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In Source 3, paragraph 2, Hunter calls a compulsory school law without other help "utter folly." What is his reason?

    APoor families could not pay the school fees the law required BTeachers in poor neighborhoods refused to teach the poorest of their pupils CThe law kept children out of the factories where they could earn DChildren weak from hunger may sit in school for years, learning little

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Invented data (Source 4 table): what percent of the surveyed teenagers in each neighborhood work 15 or more hours a week during the school year?

    AEastside 54 percent, Ridge 21 percent BEastside 13.5 percent, Ridge 5.3 percent CEastside 30 percent, Ridge 12 percent DEastside 30 percent, Ridge 21 percent

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In Source 4, paragraph 4, a reader says the numbers "prove that Eastside teenagers just don't care about school." What is the main error in this interpretation?

    AIt turns a group rate into a trait of every person in the group BIt uses percentages instead of the raw counts from the survey CIt compares two neighborhoods with different numbers of teenagers DIt relies on a survey that included too many households

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In Source 4, paragraph 3, Owen joins the summer program because a neighbor drives him. What does his story suggest about how inequality's effects reach individuals?

    ALiving in Eastside has no effect at all on any teenager who lives there BOwen's family must earn more money than Marisol's family does CThe survey's rates for Eastside must have been computed wrongly DA personal resource can soften a disadvantage that a group shares

15. Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer

    Use the table: if the under-$521 group (219 births) had had the "ample" group's rate (40 deaths per 476 births), about how many of its babies would have died? How many more deaths were recorded than that? Explain what the difference suggests and one reason it may not all be caused by low wages.

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16. Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer

    Using Source 2 and Source 3, describe one effect of inequality on a group and one on an individual. Explain why each needs a different kind of evidence.

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17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    Source 2, paragraph 1 says the figures show "clearly the relation between low wages and ill health and infant deaths." Using Source 2, paragraph 2 and Source 1, paragraph 4, give two reasons the figures show a relation but do not by themselves prove that low wages alone caused the deaths.

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18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    Invented data: use the Source 4 table to compute the share of teenagers in a summer academic program in each neighborhood. Interpret the gap as a group effect, use Marisol's story (paragraph 2) for an individual effect, and name one weakness of this evidence.

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19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    Compare Hunter (Source 3) and the Children's Bureau (Sources 1 and 2) as evidence about the effects of inequality. What kind of evidence does each use, and which is stronger for which kind of claim?

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20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    Invented situation: in an invented school district, students from the lowest-income fifth of families miss an average of 14 school days a year, against 7 days for other students. Write an interpretation that states the group effect, suggests one possible individual-level mechanism, and names one other explanation a researcher would need to rule out.

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These standards connect to D2.Soc.16.9-12: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.

Standard text: National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History (Silver Spring, MD: NCSS, 2013). NCSS was not involved in the production of this lesson and does not endorse it.