Helping Hands: Race, Neighborhood Context, and Reluctance in Providing Job-Finding Assistance

Helping Hands: Race, Neighborhood Context, and Reluctance in Providing Job-Finding Assistance

In order to explain persistent racial inequality, researchers have posited that black Americans receive fewer job benefits from their social networks because of their reluctance to provide assistance to others who are looking for work. We test this idea on a national scale using geo-coded data from...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sociological quarterly 2015-06, Vol.56 (3), p.539-557
Main Authors: Hamm, Lindsay, McDonald, Steve
Format: Article
Language:eng
Subjects:
African Americans
Assistance
Black Community
Blacks
Context
Friendship
Inequality
Job hunting
Neighborhoods
Occupations
Poverty
Race
Racism
Social Networks
Sociology
Whites
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Summary:In order to explain persistent racial inequality, researchers have posited that black Americans receive fewer job benefits from their social networks because of their reluctance to provide assistance to others who are looking for work. We test this idea on a national scale using geo-coded data from the General Social Survey. Our results show that, on average, blacks offer more frequent job-finding assistance to their friends than do whites. However, additional analyses reveal that race-based job-finding assistance is context dependent, as blacks living in areas characterized by concentrated black poverty have lower odds of helping others search for jobs than members of other races and in other community contexts.
ISSN:0038-0253
1533-8525