Wyndham-Douds, Kiara and Sarah K. Cowan. 2024. “The Effects of Income on Newborn Health: The Case of a Universal Cash Transfer.” American Sociological Review.

American babies fare worse than their peers in high-income countries, and their well-being is starkly unequal along socioeconomic and racialized lines. Newborn health predicts adult well-being, making these inequalities consequential. Policymakers and scholars seeking to improve newborn health and reduce inequality have recently looked to direct cash transfers as a viable intervention. We examine the only unconditional cash transfer in the United States, the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD), to learn if giving pregnant people money improves their newborns' health. Alaska has paid its residents a significant dividend annually since 1982. The dividend’s size varies yearly and is exogenous to Alaskans and the local economy, permitting us to make causal claims. After accounting for fertility selection, we find that receiving cash during pregnancy has no meaningful effect on newborn health. Current theory focuses on purchasing power and status mechanisms to delineate how money translates into health. It cannot illuminate this null finding. This case illustrates a weakness with current theory: it does not provide clear expectations for interventions. We propose four components that must be considered in tandem to predict whether proposed interventions will work.

Wyndham-Douds, Kiara . 2023. “Suburbs, Inc.: Exploring Municipal Incorporation as a Mechanism of Racial and Economic Exclusion in Suburban Communities. ” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 9(2):226-248.

This paper provides suburban scholars with a starting point for considering how municipal incorporation contributes to suburban inequality. I conduct an exploratory empirical analysis of incorporation in 2010 and find that incorporated suburbs are less racially diverse, Whiter, and have smaller shares of Black, Latinx, and Native American residents than unincorporated suburbs, suggesting that incorporation and its related municipal powers enable greater racial exclusion than strategies available to unincorporated suburbs. However, there is variation among incorporated suburbs, and racial exclusion is most apparent in suburbs incorporated during and after the post-war suburban boom. Further, recently incorporated suburbs are more economically exclusive than unincorporated suburbs. I end by calling for greater integration of incorporation into suburban inequality research.

Douds, Kiara Wyndham. 2021. “The Diversity Contract: Constructing Racial Harmony in a Diverse American Suburb.” American Journal of Sociology 126(6):1347-1388.

Although theorists argue that ideology and material conditions emerge in relation to one another, the connection between racial ideology and place is undertheorized. Analyzing in-depth interviews (N=109) with residents of a racially diverse suburb—Fort Bend County, Texas—the author uncovers a local racial ideology that they term the diversity contract. In contrast to colorblindness, which requires avoidance of race talk, residents exhibit selective engagement: race is recognized for certain purposes—including to celebrate diversity—but recognition of racial inequality in the community is disallowed. Through the diversity contract, residents co-construct the appearance of racial harmony. The author theorizes that this ideology emerges in highly selective, socioeconomically homogeneous diverse suburbs and finds preliminary support for this theory through comparative interviews in Queens County, New York (N=20). Overall, findings suggest that place should be centralized in analyses of racial ideology and illustrate how racial inequality is upheld through different ideologies across varying local contexts.

Cowan, Sarah K. and Kiara Wyndham Douds. 2022. “Examining the Effects of a Universal Cash Transfer on Fertility.” Social Forces.

Childbearing is at once deeply personal and shaped by social structure. It is also a site of profound inequality in the United States. Income inequality is an upstream cause of childbearing inequality, yet the evidence of the effect of income on reproduction is inconclusive. Previously, scholars primarily examined the introduction of means-tested relief to families with children. This limits analysis to families in poverty and provides insight only into the presence or absence of a policy. We analyze the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, which has provided all Alaskan residents with a substantial annual cash payment since 1982. The amount of the payment varies annually and is exogenous to individual Alaskans’ behavior and the state’s economy. We examine the effect of the cash transfers on fertility and abortion among a large and diverse population that has received varying amounts of money over time. We find that the payments increase short-term fertility rates one and two years after disbursement, particularly among socioeconomically disadvantaged populations. Standardized to the 2010 household size distribution, two average payments relative to two minimum payments would result in a predicted fertility rate increase from 80.03 to 86.53 per 1,000 women age 15-44. The effect is largest for first births. The payments have no effect on the abortion rate. These results indicate that the additional income removes economic constraints to reproductive health and autonomy and reduces reproductive inequality.

Douds, Kiara Wyndham, R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy, and Kimberley Johnson. 2021. “Visualizing Variation in Majority-Black Suburbs in the United States.” Socius. 

With this visualization, we aim to highlight sociodemographic variation among Black suburbs and spur further research on them. We provide a sociodemographic portrait of Black suburbs – defined as suburbs that are over 50% Black – to highlight their prevalence and variety. The 100 largest MSAs in 2018 contained 413 Black suburbs, representing 5% of all suburbs. We examine distributions of Black suburbs on two characteristics – median household income and housing age – to make two points. First, we show that Black suburbs feature substantial sociodemographic variation in terms of both income and housing age. Second, we show that this variation is not primarily a function of suburbs’ Black population share. Contrary to common assumptions, Black suburbs are not all older suburbs populated by the socioeconomically disadvantaged but include newer, middle-class, and affluent places as well.

Douds, Kiara Wyndham and Ethan J. Raker. 2021. “The Geography of Ethnoracial Birth Weight Inequalities in the United States.” SSM – Population Health 15. 

In this article, we describe, decompose, and examine correlates of the geography of ethnoracial inequalities in low birth weight (LBW) in the United States. Drawing on the population of singleton births to U.S.-born White, Black, Latinx, and Native American parents in the first decade of the twenty-first century (N=28.2 million births), we calculate county-level LBW rates and rate ratios. Results demonstrate a stark racial hierarchy in which Black infants experience the most significant disadvantage, but we also document substantial local-level variation organized in what we call a regionalized patchwork of inequality, with high-disparity counties bordering low-disparity counties coupled with regional clustering. Examining the component parts of local disparities – the LBW rates for Whites and groups of color - we find strong evidence that spatial variation in ethnoracial LBW inequalities is driven by greater variation in infants of color's health across counties than by variation in Whites’ health. Further, LBW rates for groups of color are only weakly to moderately correlated with Whites’ LBW rates, suggesting that the same contexts can produce racially divergent health outcomes. Examining contextual factors that predict LBW disparities, we find that more segregated, socioeconomically unequal, and urban counties have larger LBW disparities. We conclude by positing an approach to health disparities that conceptualizes ethnoracial differences in health as fundamentally relational and spatial phenomena produced by systems of White advantage.

Douds, Kiara Wyndham and Michael Hout. 2020. “Microaggressions in the United States.” Sociological Science 7:528-543.

“Microaggressions” is the term scholars and cultural commentators use to describe the ways that racism and other systems of oppression are upheld in everyday interac- tions. While prior research has documented the types of microaggressions that individuals experience, we have lacked representative data on the prevalence of microaggressions in the general population. We introduce and evaluate five new survey items from the 2018 General Social Survey intended to capture five types of microaggressions. We assess the prevalence of each microaggression as well as a constructed microaggression scale across a key set of socio-demographic characteristics. We find that Black Americans experience more microaggressions than other racialized groups, twice the rate of the general public for some types. Younger people report more microaggressions than older people. Women are more likely to report some types of microaggressions, and men others. Experiencing microaggressions is associated with an array of negative physical and mental health outcomes.

Douds, Kiara W., Heather A. O’Connell, and Jenifer L. Bratter. 2019. “The Racial Boundaries of Inequality: How Racial Hierarchies and White Identity Shape Whites’ Explanations for Racial Inequality.” The Du Bois Review The Du Bois Review 16(1):83-106.

Many White Americans believe that individual rather than structural factors explain racial inequality, yet there is substantial variation in Whites’ perceptions. Using data from the Portraits of American Life Study, we exploit this variation to provide insight into the processes driving Whites’ perceptions of the causes of racial inequality. Specifically, we assess how social boundaries inform Whites’ explanations for the disadvantage of two racial groups: Blacks and Asians. First, we examine how each group’s position in the racial hierarchy relates to the types of explanations employed by Whites and find that Whites use individual explanations more often for Blacks than Asians. Second, we assess the extent to which the importance given to race in one’s overall identity affects how Whites explain racial disadvantage. Whites who see their Whiteness as being important to their identity are more likely to use individual rather than structural explanations to explain Black disadvantage. Together, these findings provide insight into the social psychological processes that contribute to Whites’ perceptions of racial inequality and suggest increased attention to how perceptions of out-group boundaries shape individual perceptions of inequality. Addressing this dimension of how individuals view inequality will be critical to future efforts to reduce it.

Douds, Kiara W. and Jie Wu. 2018. “Trust in the Bayou City: Do Racial Segregation and Discrimination Matter for Generalized Trust?” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 4(4):567-584.

The key role that generalized trust plays in social capital formation is well documented, but its determinants are not well understood. Many studies suggest that racially and ethnically diverse areas have lower generalized trust than more homogeneous areas, but evidence regarding the impact of the spatial arrangement of racial and ethnic groups is not conclusive. Further, while scholars theorize that discrimination may play a role in racial trust gaps, no study has empirically supported this linkage. We examine the impact of racial residential segregation and perceived discrimination on generalized trust in two highly diverse Texas counties using data from the 2014 Kinder Houston Area Survey. Results indicate that perceived racial discrimination negatively impacts trust and may mediate the black-white trust gap, whereas racial segregation is positively associated with trust. Additionally, having an interracial friendship, one form of bridging ties, moderates the segregation-trust relationship such that, up to a certain level of segregation, having an interracial friendship increases one’s likelihood of trusting others. Together, these results provide insight into processes that generate or sustain the general trust that makes social capital formation possible and point to the continuing importance of race in shaping experiences and outcomes in modern American society.

Emerson, Michael O., Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, and Kiara W. Douds. 2015. “Studying Race and Religion: A Critical Assessment.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1(3):349-359.

The authors provide an analytical review of the past 115 years of scholarship on race, ethnicity, and religion. Too often work in the study of race and ethnicity has not taken the influence of religion seriously enough, with the consequence being an incomplete understanding of racialization, racial and ethnic identity, and racial inequality. The authors examine key works in the field; conduct an assessment of articles published on race, ethnicity, and religion in six journals over a five-year period; and outline where scholarship should head in future years. Most notably, until the mutual influences of race, ethnicity and religion are better understood, the power of each is underestimated.