identified through both economic and non-pecuniary measures (Dannefer 2003), CA/D processes are embedded in, and influenced by the interaction of, social, economic, and demographic forces that are external to the individual or household.
One example of such a context that fits with the life-cycle model of wealth trajectories is the age cohort effect—that is, the circumstances and consequences of being born within a particular time span. Being a member of a specific age cohort has implications for one’s life-cycle wealth accumulation. First, the size of the cohort demarcates one’s opportunities for mobility. The sheer size of the baby-boomer generation, for example, has created among its members a greater competition for education, employment, and housing, and this in turn has impacted the timing of marriage and childbearing, women’s labor force participation, and savings behavior (Keister and Deeb-Sossa 2001). Second, the availability of jobs, affordable housing, and credit varies over time and has important consequences for asset ownership and wealth accumulation. For example, research on immigrants’ economic mobility has shown that the timing of migration exposes immigrants to distinct opportunity structures in the labor and housing markets. Such structures are tied to the availability or absence of jobs, the price of housing in local markets, the accessibility of credit, and the relative burden of owning or renting a home (Myers and Lee 1998).
Age cohort effects are only one example used to demonstrate the importance of the differential social and economic contexts in which individuals belong as members of a particular demographic or social group. Social scientists are very much aware of the role that group membership plays in confining or enabling individual mobility during the life course. Drawing on Blau and Duncan’s (1967) status attainment model, Diprete and Eirich (2006) report that, unlike the strict CA model, racial differences in returns on socioeconomic resources reveal the interaction effects of the social group variable (in this case, race) with socioeconomic resources. In addition to inequality between individuals in the same group or within the entire population, Blau and Duncan’s (1967) model emphasizes group membership as a meso-level determinant of economic standing and racial inequality in the US. DiPrete and Eirich (2006) note that for Blau and Duncan racial inequality was viewed as a product of CA/D processes
because race had both direct and indirect effects on outcomes at different stages in the life course, and because highly educated blacks received lower status returns than did highly educated whites (an interaction effect that they referred to as “perverse” equality). (DiPrete and Eirich 2006: 273)
When more than one status category is involved in CA/D processes, inequalities can accumulate further. The terms “interaction effects” and “double” or “triple” disadvantage reflect attempts to describe, measure, and explain forms of CA/D related to both economic position and demographic categories—for instance race, ethnicity, religion, gender, nativity status, or age (see Chapter 5).
Macro-level context: The “period” effect
In addition to micro-level processes, which occur during the life course, and meso-level processes, which are based on social group membership and interaction effects, changes in the distribution of wealth and in opportunities for mobility are also subject to a third, macro-level layer of demographic, economic, and social processes that affect all members of society. In his study on historical trends in inequality throughout human history, historian Walter Scheidel (2017: 6) concludes that stability usually coincides with growing inequality and that the most effective long-term leveling of inequality has been a product of the “four horsemen”: mass mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and lethal pandemics.
The notion of macro-level shocks as the big equalizer does not nullify the micro- and meso-level CA/D processes just discussed. Macro-level trends often interact with the meso-level context of group membership in ways that exacerbate or mitigate CA/D processes. Because the effect of macro-level events on individual households is mediated by the particular experiences of the demographic and social groups that households are affiliated with, it is possible that wealth inequality in the general population will decline but that disparities between and within sub-populations will continue to rise. It has also been shown that external shocks can have a substantial impact on members of a particular economic class while tending to spare others. The next chapter explores the macro-level economic and social processes that have contributed to the changing wealth landscape since the early twentieth century. A special emphasis will be placed on large-scale institutional and economic transformations and on changing demographic structures.
Notes
1 1. Matthew 13:12, as quoted in Merton (1995: 394, footnote 19): “Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”
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