The Pecking Order:
Which Siblings Succeed and Why
Pantheon Books (February 2004)
WHY ARE SOME OF US RICH AND OTHERS POOR? WHY
ARE SOME OF US
famous while the rest remain anonymous? The underlying premise of The Pecking Order can be simply stated:
the best way to understand why some Americans succeed more than others is to
examine differences within families — that is, to compare siblings to one another.
Because here is the astonishing news – economic differences between siblings represent
about 75 percent of all differences between individuals.
Class identity is not necessarily shared between brothers and sisters.
Inequality starts at home.
To explain how a pecking order emerges in American families, Conley weaves data from three major studies through the
narratives of individual family histories. The book examines the many factors that predict which siblings will succeed and why;
and the ways in which parents and siblings affect a child's success. Conley considers an array of circumstances to account
for the pecking order—genetics, birth order, family size, economics, divorce, death, gender, race—as well as outside
influences such as simple luck and accident. And The Pecking Order makes unequivocally clear that the family, rather than being a refuge
from larger social forces, acts as a cauldron where those forces play out in wholly startling ways.
After the Bell:
Educational Influences Outside of School
Edited with Karen Albright
Routledge (2004)
OVER 35 YEARS AGO, SOCIOLOGIST JAMES COLEMAN AND HIS CO-AUTHORS
issued what is today considered the most controversial report on inequality in schooling.
The document – which later came to be known as the Coleman Report – reached the troubling
conclusion that the strongest predictor of academic performance was not school-based dynamics
but was, rather, a student’s family background. Since the publication of this controversial
report, many researchers have gone back to reanalyze the original data. Though there remains
some disagreement regarding the extent of school effects, a tacit consensus has evolved across
the ideological spectrum that the effects of various dimensions of background—family, community,
genotype—are stronger influences on educational achievement than are specific school-based policies.
Yet, after 35 years of evidence that schools are marginal in the grand scheme of academic achievement,
educational politics and policy continue to focus almost exclusively on schools.
Obviously, both school and non-school factors are critical to educational success,
and—even more importantly—to labor market outcomes. The main point of this volume is
to demonstrate some of the crucial ways that non-school factors matter, in order to
remind educational reformers to expand their vision of what is possible. What would an
education policy look like if it did not mention the word "school"? Can government
address achievement differences that are rooted in the home? What are the political implications?
These are some of the questions that motivate this collection of works on non-school based
factors affecting children’s educational performance. An introduction by the editors provides the
historical and policy framework for the analyses in the chapters that follow.
 The Starting
Gate:
Birth Weight and Life Chances
with Kate Strully and Neil G. Bennett
University of California Press (August, 2003)
IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA, ABOUT SEVEN PERCENT OF INFANTS
WEIGH
less than than five and a half pounds at birth. These low birth weight babies are at
grater risk for infant mortality and a number of developmental problems.
African Americans and low income mothers, in turn, are at substantially
greater risk of having a low birth weight baby than white or middle
class women. These two facts present a chicken and egg problem.
How do we know what is causing what when low birth weight is often
accompanied by social risk factors such as minority racial status,
low education, young maternal age and low income?
The Starting Gate examines the social causes and consequences
of low birth weight, using the "starting gate" of life
as a heuristic to address larger issues of how biological health
relates to social conditions within an intergenerational framework.
This book is based on a unique study that tracks babies and their
siblings over three decades to examine the long-term, deleterious
consequences of being born low birth weight. Such lasting effects
of low birth weight have recently entered the national spotlight
-- prominently discussed on the front page of the New York Times.
It also uses within-family comparisons of siblings and cousins to
try to separate heritable aspects of infant health and its lasting
consequences from immediate social factors. In doing so, the book
engages not only with research on infant health, educational outcomes,
and race, but also on the controversies surrounding nature and nurture
within the social sciences and genetics.
 Wealth and
Poverty in America : A Reader
Edited with an Introduction
Blackwell Publishers (December, 2002)
THE IDEOLOGIES OF EQUAL OPPORTUNITY & INDIVIDUAL
responsibility that dominate American culture tend to obscure the casual connections
between poverty and wealth. Uncovering these connections is one
of the purposes of this book.
Wealth and Poverty in America is an accessible collection
of over 20 important essays on the complex relationship between
the rich and poor in the United States. It first presents classic
and contemporary selections that form theories of where wealth comes
from and why wealth tends to concentrate in the hands of the few.
This set of readings deals with wealth at a more systematic, rather
than individual, level. Next, the book deals with the question of
why certain individuals – based on position in the economy,
or accident of birth – can expect to have greater or lesser
chances of being rich (or poor), and how inequality gets reproduced.
It goes on to offer a series of the most important classic and contemporary
readings that focus on the life of the upper class and the daily
experience of being poor in America. The final section opens up
the question of what is possible in terms of the distribution of
material rewards in America.
An editorial introduction by Dalton Conley and suggestions for further reading
make this a valuable source of information and analysis on the realities of
wealth and poverty in America.
  Honky
Cloth: University of California Press (October, 2000)
Paper: Vintage Books (October, 2001)
LITTLE LEAGUE BASEBALL, PLAYGROUND
"SNAPS",
and after school karate lessons -- at first glance Dalton Conley's
childhood had all the typical hallmarks of growing up. But on closer
look, Conley's childhood was anything but normal. One of the few
white boys in a neighborhood of mostly black and Puerto Rican housing
projects on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Conley learned early on
about race in America. His first lesson came at age three when he
attempted to kidnap his neighbor -- a black infant he was convinced
could be his biological sister. By the time he was a teenager, he
learned that even a doting parent couldn't keep his best friend
from being struck by a stray bullet. Since Conley's parents retained
the "cultural capital" of the white middle class, Conley
was able to move beyond the expectations of those in his community.
Now a sociologist, Conley looks back on his childhood with remarkable
insight. The result is a perfectly pitched memoir rich with moving
portraits of people caught up in the vortex of race and class in
America.
Being Black, Living in the Red:
Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America
University of California Press (June, 1999)
WHAT IS MORE IMPORTANT--RACE OR CLASS--IN DETERMINING THE
socioeconomic success of the blacks and whites born since the civil
rights triumphs of the 1960s? When compared to whites, African Americans
complete less formal schooling, work fewer hours at a lower rate
of pay and are more likely to give birth to a child out of wedlock
and to rely on welfare. Are these differences attributable to race
per se, or are they the result of differences in socioeconomic background
between the two groups?
Being Black, Living in the Red demonstrates that many differences
between blacks and whites stem not from race but from economic inequalities
that have accumulated over the course of American history. Property
ownership--as measured by net worth--reflects this legacy of economic
oppression. The racial discrepancy in wealth holdings leads to advantages
for whites in the form of better schools, more desirable residences,
higher wages, and more opportunities to save, invest, and thereby
further their economic advantages.
Dalton Conley shows how factoring parental wealth into a reconceptualization
of class can lead to a different future for race policy in the United
States. As it currently stands, affirmative action programs primarily
address racial diversity in schooling and work--areas that Conley
contends generate paradoxical results with respect to racial equity.
Instead he suggests an affirmative action policy that fosters minority
property accumulation, thereby encouraging long-term wealth equity,
or one that-while continuing to address schooling and work--is based
on social class as defined by family wealth levels rather than on
race.
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