The full impact on community, work, family, and its intersections is not yet clear. As the Editorial Board of Community, Work & Family, we share a deep concern for the potential impact of this global health pandemic. We similarly stand in awe to all the communities, workers, and families doing their utmost to combat it.

In this article, we do not attempt to provide definitive answers or even recommendations to address the problems we are witnessing. We do, however, feel the need to raise a collective voice about the significant potential for increased inequality. COVID-19 is not a great leveler. In all likelihood, COVID-19 will exacerbate existing inequalities, both in its immediate consequences resulting from the drastic measures taken to contain its spread, as well as its potential long-term consequences. These inequalities may take many forms. We highlight a number of them here as they relate to this journal’s focus on community, work, and family.

Full editorial here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13668803.2020.1756568

Het coronavirus zou niet discrimineren volgens Bert Wagendorp. Deze aanname klopt hoogstwaarschijnlijk niet. Een sluitend antwoord op de vraag of het coronavirus discrimineert op basis van bijvoorbeeld gender laat op zich wachten: volgens onderzoekers in The Lancet ontbreekt tot nu onderzoek naar pandemieën en genderverschillen. Desalniettemin lijkt het coronavirus wel degelijk te discrimineren: sociaaleconomische verschillen en genderverschillen op basis van blootstelling liggen op de loer.

Onderliggende sociaaleconomische verschillen kunnen leiden tot sociaaleconomisch onderscheid in blootstellingskansen. Jezelf beschermen tegen blootstelling gaat een stuk makkelijker als je een vaste baan hebt, of een goed gevulde bankrekening (denk aan het thuis laten bezorgen van pakketten of boodschappen). Voor de mensen die al moeilijk de eindjes aan elkaar konden knopen, is thuiswerken vaak geen optie en meerdere dagen werk missen ook niet. Hierdoor lopen zij een veel groter risico om blootgesteld te worden. Niet voor niets zien we overal ter wereld – van New York tot Stockholm tot Johannesburg – dat arme wijken het centrum van coronabesmettingen vormen.

Blootstellingskansen kunnen ook hoger liggen voor vrouwen, bijvoorbeeld doordat vrouwen oververtegenwoordigd zijn in de sector die nu het hardst werkt om ons in leven te houden, de gezondheidszorg. Zij stellen zich dagelijks bloot aan mensen die besmet zijn. Voor bepaalde beroepsgroepen in de gezondheidszorg waar vrouwen ook sterk oververtegenwoordigd zijn, zoals de thuiszorg, is de situatie zelfs schrijnend te noemen. Er is nu al onvoldoende beschermingsmateriaal voor al het personeel. Dit zijn vaak dezelfde thuiszorgorganisaties die de laatste jaren steeds meer moesten doen met beperkte middelen door stevige overheidsbezuinigingen.

En dat is misschien wel het pijnlijkst aan het coronavirus: de discriminatie van het virus hebben we als maatschappij over onszelf afgeroepen. Hoewel de regering nu ongekende en zeer noodzakelijke maatregelen neemt om zowel de medische als de economische gevolgen van de coronapandemie te dempen, is zij ook medeverantwoordelijk voor de jarenlange uitholling van de publieke sector, de afwenteling van arbeidsrisico’s op werknemers, de onzekerheid op de arbeidsmarkt, de groei van het aantal onvrijwillige zzp’ers, en het afschuiven van zorgtaken op mantelzorg (wederom voor het overgrote deel door vrouwen gegeven). Allemaal factoren die de blootstellingskansen voor lagere sociaaleconomische klassen en vrouwen vergroten.

Wie net als Bert Wagendorp beweert dat het virus niet discrimineert, sluit de ogen voor de maatschappelijke scheidslijnen die het virus blootlegt. We hebben onze samenleving zelf zo ingericht dat sociaaleconomische klasse en gender bepalen wie de grootste kans heeft om aan het virus blootgesteld te worden.

Mara A. Yerkes is Universitair Hoofddocent in Interdisciplinaire Sociale Wetenschap (Universiteit Utrecht) met expertise op het terrein van sociaal beleid en sociale ongelijkheid.

Rense Nieuwenhuis is Associate Professor in de sociologie bij het Zweeds instituut voor sociaal-wetenschappelijk onderzoek (SOFI) aan de Universiteit van Stockholm. Hij doet onderzoek op het gebied van sociaal-economische ongelijkheid, gezinnen, en sociaal beleid.

I love you, and you are broken.

Sitting in Lafayette Square, overlooking the White House, I started writing this letter. I spent about 10 days on the East Coast, and enjoyed my friends, brilliant minds at the conference I came here to attend, the activism, ambition and resilience, museums, venues and vistas. Yet, more than before, I am weary of my impressions.

I’ve been to the national mall, I’ve seen the memorials. Writings on the wall about the price of freedom, paid in Korea and Vietnam. Lincoln on bringing together the nation “with malice toward none, with charity for all”. Beautiful! My company and I were interviewed by a father who was making a documentary for his children, asking passer-by’s questions about the state of his country. I told him that the memorials surrounded us with lessons that seem lost. Interesting guy, but when we started asking him questions about the current role of his country in the world, I was disappointed. Mistaking, in my view, power for leadership, he maintained that the world’s nations unequivocally looked up to America’s leadership. So little self-awareness, so close to the reflection pond.

There was so much stress and inequality on the streets. A driver getting out of his car to threaten a pedestrian. Traffic controllers working in the middle of a crossroads, yelling at cars. On top of their lungs, all day. The constant haggling for tips. I really don’t mind paying well for good service but prefer companies that pay their workers generously. Here restaurants and hotels were actively campaigning against legislation to improve the pay for service workers. So here I was, a comparatively rich white man tipping predominantly people of color.

Jason Isbell sang the theme song to my visit: TVA (the Tennessee Valley Authority). It is just him and his guitar, with a song about social policy. And about life. The American people are often thought to care little about social policy, but his American audience responds strongly when Jason Isbell sings about Roosevelt, public employment programs, and an honest day’s pay.

But oh, how you are dismantling your policies and institutions. I was interviewed by Off Kilter, together with Laurie Maldonado, on our new edited book “The triple bind of single-parent families”. With lack of support to work, a massively unequal and precarious labor market, and a safety net that is inadequate and stigmatizing (looking at you, food stamps), single parents are worst off in the US. The interview was intelligent, informed and progressive. It also had to bring up marriage promotion and marriage training programs, which are widely popular in public debate, and considered solutions to reduce poverty. This obsession with marriage, particularly in the form of government issued programs, continue to distress and confuse me. I went on record saying it’s “just weird”. We know that these programs are ineffective, costing loads of money to achieve exactly nothing. But more importantly, if your nation is so vehemently against all forms of government interference, why call upon the government to interfere in one of the most intimate parts of life: how and whom to love and live with? Why would this be considered an acceptable policy for single parents? Is it because they are poor? Is it because they are women? Is it because they are black?

Unaffordable healthcare affects everyone, not just the poor. Friends shared their experiences with health care, and health insurance. It just seems impossible! These are very smart friends (like, PhD smart), yet all struggled in getting, or holding on to, a good insurance. Yes, there’s also plenty of bad insurance, not even covering basic needs. The healthcare bills are staggering, reimbursement incredibly complex, and coverage very haphazard. I even learned a new word: co-insurance. It’s when your insurance covers only a percentage of your healthcare expenses. With the price of healthcare in America, this easily results in insurmountable bills. With one friend, we walked across a man who thought he broke his ankle (it certainly looked bad and painful). He asked for advice where he could have it checked out. First response? “Are you insured, and how well are you covered?” As healthcare insurance is tied to jobs, not having a job means putting your health at risk (this is painfully clear in the Medicaid work requirements). This creates inequality on the workplace, with workers (colleagues!) having different access to healthcare. These conditions mean that our friends cannot accept otherwise desirable jobs, makes temporary contracts even more risky, and finding a new job even more pressing – particularly when it can easily take over 200 applications.

Before going home, we visited the “Evicted” exhibition. It tells a tale that is familiar by now: poverty and inequality, stagnating and inadequate wages, rising rents, insecurity, terrible housing conditions, landlords only out to make a profit: all resulting in high and rising numbers of predominantly black women and their children being evicted. Their belongings on the street. Overcrowded courts literally spending only seconds on each case, and tenants without guaranteed rights to legal representation. It brought together so many of the impressions of my visit to America: poverty and inequality, racial disparities, lack of social protection. The small incidents of life having such dire consequences. So many people under pressure and at peril, except perhaps for a few hoarders of opportunity at the top. Yet, there was also a message of hope. In the words of Matthew Desmond, whose work is behind the exhibition: “All this suffering is shameful and unnecessary. Because it is unnecessary, there is hope. The problems are neither intractable nor eternal. A different kind of society is possible, and powerful solutions are within our collective reach.”

Dear America. I continue to love you, for now, for what you can be, for who some of my exceptional friends are. A land of opportunity you once were. Now, more so than in a long time, and more so than elsewhere, Americans’ opportunities are determined by who their parents are, their gender, who they marry, and the color of their skin. But you can do better. You paid the price for freedom from tyranny, now you need to make the effort for all Americans to have the freedom to opportunity. You’ll have to.

In the application of multilevel models in country-comparative studies, however, it has long been overlooked that on the country-level only a limited number of observations are available. As a result, measurements on single countries can easily overly influence the regression outcomes.

Diagnostic tools for detecting influential data in multilevel regression are becoming available (including our own influence.ME), but what are your experiences with influential cases in country-comparative (multilevel) studies? How do you deal with influential cases if you encounter them?

First of all, I have been able to travel a lot. I visited Gent, Luxembourg, Oslo, Leuven, Warsaw, and New York. I have good memories about all of these trips. In Gent I attended a conference, and had a great tour in the city. Luxembourg, strangely enough, took the most time to get there. I visited Oslo just a few days after the attacks. The number of roses on the street was still growing while I was there. Leuven hosted a QMSS summer school, where I met some very nice people. Warsaw was intense. I went there for a very nice collaboration, and we did the groundwork for an article in just one week. New York, finally, was so much more colorful than I expected. I look forward to going back there next year.

In the end, all this traveling is about sharing your work and getting it published. By now, a major journal has shown serious interest in publishing the manuscript that I presented at several of the conferences I attended. Another journal (a bit more low-key) might be interested in one of my side projects. I very much look forward to seeing some of my work in print. My next project, which I started working on in Warsaw, is already showing some interesting results, albeit preliminary. Nevertheless, with presenting this paper I won the best paper award at the Institute for Innovation and Governance Studies (IGS).

The PhD candidates of my university are organized in the PhD Network of the University of Twente (P-NUT). I decided to become a board member early this year. I’m having a good time, found myself amidst a nice new group of friends, and can contribute to the position of PhD candidates at our university. Our PhD Network has gone through some interesting developments towards a more professional organization, and it is interesting to see how strong our position has become. To make things even more interesting, the current board supports my candidacy for becoming the president of P-NUT next year!

All in all, with traveling, publishing, and political activities, I think academic life in 2011 has provided me with wonderful experiences. So, in many ways, thank you 2011. I look forward to 2012!

I have been seriously contemplating whether or not to continue blogging. However, the number of daily readers remained high, even months after my last post. Of course, this is motivating, but more so: I like to share my thoughts in the light and easy way that is customary to a blog. Therefore, I decided to continue blogging and attempt to rebuild my network of (social) science related blogs.

Also, I decided to realign the content of Curving Normality more closely with the activities I’m involved in. This way, the blog can enforce academic endeavors, rather than draining time form them. So, I decided upon four major topics:

• Science in General: Articles I read, books that inspired me, reactions to blogs I read on the internet. I will write some about the science I like, and try to discuss why I think it is remarkable and why it is important that it reaches a larger audience.
• Academic Activities. It is a personal blog after all, so I like to inform my readers about some of the academic activities I’m undertaking. Expect to read some about conferences, publications, and summer schools.
• Data: This one will be new. As a quantitative sociologist, data is/are my raw material. It is what I use to test my theories, and it is absolutely required for gaining a grasp on reality. Good data is valuable, and hard to come by. Fortunately, increasing amounts of data are made publicly available on the internet. I intend to highlight some of the best sources of data out there, and hope to build quite a collection of references over time.
• R-Project: I’ve always written a lot about R, and will continue doing so. The R-sessions will continue, and I will write more about the of the projects I’m currently working on in R.

I think this is a nice mix of science-related topics, and will hopefully appeal to my readers. I know that I look forward to blog with this new agenda in mind.

Currently, I am updating this website, and making plans to continue blogging on Curving Normality. Some things will change, but most will remain the same. Love to hear from you all soon again!