Social Problems, 6th Edition

I. New and Updated Features

Compelling features capture student attention and boost knowledge retention

• A Tracking the Trends figure at the beginning of each chapter identifies and graphically presents key trends driving contemporary public debate, engaging students in chapter content from the outset. For example, Chapter 2, Poverty and Wealth, opens with a Tracking the Trends figure that reveals declining belief in “the American Dream.”

Updated content ensures that students learn from contemporary examples

• Up-to-date coverage of important trends ensures that students learn about key concepts via engaging, timely examples. For example, all recent changes in patterns of same-sex marriage are covered in Chapter 7: Sexuality, and recent changes in decriminalization of marijuana are covered in Chapter 8: Alcohol and Other Drugs.

• The sixth edition includes the latest statistics and references. All statistical material throughout the text has been updated to the latest available data. In addition, the sixth edition includes hundreds of new research references.

II. Content Updates

1. Sociology: Studying Social Problems
• Tracking the Trends figure showing the U.S. public’s declining confidence in government.
• New research identifying issues most commonly cited as social problems.
• New discussion of how language is used in claims making as well as new discussion of the emerging issue of government use of computer technology to track people’s movement and communication.
• Updates on the extent of global inequality.
• New 2012 data inform the discussion of the distribution of political attitudes across the U.S. population.

2. Poverty and Wealth
• Tracking the Trends figure showing the declining share of U.S. adults who say they believe that the country offers “plenty of opportunity.”
• New chapter-opening story highlights the economic differences in the wealthy town of Palo Alto, California.
• The theoretical analysis of poverty has been expanded.
• Updated and expanded discussion assessing the level of the poverty line in the United States.
• Updates on the extent of economic inequality involving income and wealth; efforts to raise the minimum wage; the highest-paid people in the United States, including the highest-paid CEOs; taxation in the United States; the poverty rates for various categories of the U.S. population; the share of young adults living with their parents; the link between income and health; the extent of homelessness; the link between income and political engagement; and the increasing share of all income earned by the top one percent of the population.

3. Racial and Ethnic Inequality
• Tracking the Trends figureshowing how race and ethnicity affect people’s access to various types of jobs.
• New research extending our understanding of social distance involving racial and ethnic minorities.
• Updates on public opinion regarding immigration; the social standing of all major racial and ethnic categories of the U.S. population; the number and share of people who claim a multiracial identity; the share of our population speaking a language other than English at home; and the increasing share of multiracial marriages.
• The debate over unauthorized immigrants has been updated and expanded.
• The affirmative action discussion is informed by recent Supreme Court decisions.
 
4. Gender Inequality
• Tracking the Trends figure showing the increasing share of students on U.S. campuses that are women.
• New chapter-opening story describes the Alison Bechdel test for gender fairness in films.
• New Social Problems in Global Perspective box examines the new gender-neutrality policy that is reshaping Swedish classrooms.
• New discussion of sexual assault in the military.
• New discussion of both multicultural feminism and also global feminism.
• The discussion of gender bias in the mass media has been expanded and updated.
• Updates on education achievement by sex; the share of women and men in the labor force; the share of women in political leadership at local, state, and national levels; women’s relative political power in nations around the world; the expanding role of women in the U.S. military; family-work conflict; how gender affects the doing of housework; the latest trends in sexual violence; how gender inequality is linked to race and ethnicity; and the discussion of sexual violence, presenting new information about categories of women at highest risk of assault.

5. Aging and Inequality
• Tracking the Trends figure showing a dramatic shift in the share of our population that has reached the age of sixty-five.
• New chapter-opening story describes the Rolling Stones, who have all now entered what has typically been considered to be old age.
• There is more attention directed to intersection theory linking age to other dimensions of inequality.
• Updates on the share of the U.S. population that has reached the age of sixty-five; the share of children and seniors who have a minority identity; the share of seniors who live alone; the increasing age of the U.S. workforce; the rate of elder abuse; the share of nursing homes cited for violation of safety standards; poverty rates and median income for elders and for all age categories; the share of elder housing units with necessary safety features; the current laws involving physician-assisted suicide and the right-to-die debate; and the voting participation of seniors compared to younger people.

6. Crime, Violence, and Criminal Justice
• Tracking the Trends figure showing that the United States experiences more mass killings than other high-income nations.
• New chapter-opening story highlights the debate over concealed-carry firearms law.
• New discussion of how race shapes the risk of incarceration after a drug conviction.
• The discussion of corrections and punishment has been updated and expanded.
• New discussion of the “justice reinvestment” policy by which mass incarceration in reduced and greater funding is provided to invest in low-income communities.
• New discussion of “diversion programs” that replace prison with treatment.
• Expanded discussion of gun violence and minority communities.
• New discussion of restorative justice.
• Updates including the latest statistics on the share of people charged with a criminal offense who are sentences through plea bargaining; the number of violent and property crimes; the lack of criminal prosecutions among the CEOs of Wall Street in the make of the bank collapses that sparked the recent recession; the latest data and recent cases of mass murder; the latest data on child abuse; new research on the link between media violence and violent behavior; the number of police officers nationwide; and the increasing number of people in the United States who are incarcerated,

7. Sexuality
• Tracking the Trends figure showing the remarkable acceptance of same-sex marriage in seventeen states between 2004 and 2014.
• New discussion of the intersection of race and LGBTQ status in encouraging hate crimes.
• New discussion links reality TV shows to a decline in teenage pregnancy.
• New section explores the idea of transgender.
• Updates on the number of hate crimes involving sexuality; the share of the U.S. population that self-identifies as homosexual; the increasing number of states that recognize same-sex marriage; evidence addressing the claim that pornography encourages rape; the extent and character of sexual harassment; the extent of prostitution; sexual tourism involving children; trends in teenage pregnancy; the current legal stand of abortion access across the United States; and the number of cases of HIV and AIDS in the United States and around the world.

8. Alcohol and Other Drugs
• Tracking the Trends figure showing the increasing support for legalization of marijuana.
• New chapter-opening story describes President Obama’s thoughts on marijuana use.
• New Personal Stories box details the tragic story of one student who became addicted to A.D.H.D. drugs.
• New national map shows the range of marijuana legislation for all the states.
• Revised marijuana, rewritten to take account of the advancing movement toward decriminalization.
• Updates on the extent of legal and illegal drug use; the extent of cigarette smoking in the United States and for the world as a whole; the death toll from smoking; and the rates of alcohol use for various categories of the population.

9. Physical and Mental Health
• Tracking the Trends figure showing the increasing rates of obesity for the U.S. population.
• The latest data on infant mortality; life expectancy; health patterns in high- and low-income nations; AIDS/HIV in national and global perspective; spending on AIDS; the cost of healthcare in the United States; average income for medical doctors; how people in the United States pay for health care; the intersectionality linking health to class, race, and gender; rates of mental illness for the U.S. population by race and ethnicity; and patterns of mental illness among college students.
• New coverage of AIDS Drug Assistance Programs.
• Updated and expanded coverage of the Affordable Healthcare Act.

10. Economy and Politics
• Tracking the Trends figure showing the low level of public confidence in the federal government.
• New chapter-opening story describes the increasing gridlock in Washington.
• Expanded and updated political analysis of the U.S. economic and political systems.
• Updates on earning of big-box store workers; government subsidies to large corporations; the financing of elections; fundraising by political action committees; the share of eligible voters going to the polls; confidence in Congress, the presidency, and other institutions; voting patterns by income, age, race, ethnicity, and gender; voting laws affecting convicted felons; and voter turnout by state.

11. Work and the Workplace
• Tracking the Trends figure showing how unemployment spiraled upwards with the onset of the recent recession;
• Expanded analysis of the so-called “jobless recovery.”
• New section describing the “low-wage recovery.”
• Substantially revised discussion of working from home.
• Substantially revised sections providing theoretical analysis of workplace issues.
• Revised and expanded political analysis of workplace issues.
• Updated include the latest statistics and trends involving coal mining deaths and injuries; the share of workers in the three major sectors of the economy; relative wage levels in the world’s nations; injury and death rates for people working various types of jobs; the share of U.S. workers in temporary jobs and without benefits; unemployment rates for various categories of the U.S. population; the share of workers represented by a labor union by race, ethnicity, and sex; median income by race, ethnicity, and gender; the share of women and men in the U.S. labor force; and the extend of union membership in the labor force.

12. Family Life
• Tracking the Trends figure showing the declining share of U.S. adults who are married, along with the increasing share of divorced and never-married people.
• New chapter-opening story about a college student who parents tried to control her to the point that she obtained a court order to keep them away.
• Expanded coverage of LGBT parenting.
• Updated to reflect the latest statistics, trends, and research involving the share of children living with both parents; the way people in the United States define “family”; the increasing number of cohabiting couples; the effects of cohabitation on the stability of subsequent marriage; the increasing age at first marriage; the increasing share of women who reach their mid-forties having had no children; the increasing share of U.S. adults who remain single; care-care arrangement for young children; the likelihood of divorce for U.S. adults; the U.S. divorce rate, both over time and in comparison to the rate in other nations; child-support payments; the increasing scope of same-sex marriage in the United States; the number and social profile of same-sex couples; and the latest of global acceptance of same-sex marriage.

13. Education
• Tracking the Trends figure showing the changing share of women and men with a four-year college degree.
• Updated and expanded discussion of how race, class, and gender affect schooling and student performance.
Expanded discussion of the economic consequences of gaining more schooling.
• New discussion of the Common Core initiative.
• New data on the increased earning that comes from completing college.
• Updates on illiteracy around the world and in the United States; the educational attainment of the U.S. population; the number of U.S. students and the rising budget to operate U.S. schools; rates of dropping out for various categories of the U.S. population; racial segregation in today’s public schools; unequal school budgets across the United States; the share of women in higher education; the concentration of women in a small share of majors; and the rising tide of school violence.

14. Urban Life
• Tracking the Trends figure showing the steady urbanization of the United States over the nation’s history.
• New and expanded discussion on Detroit’s bankruptcy and the fiscal problems facing dozens of U.S. cities.
• Updated and expanded discussion of hypersegregation of minorities in the inner-cities.
• Updates on the urban population of the United States; the recent bankruptcy of Detroit; the loss of farmland to urban sprawl; rates of poverty in central city, suburban, and rural areas; the number of homeless people in 2013; the changing profile of the nation’s largest cities; and the increasing size of the world’s largest cities.

15. Population and Global Inequality
• Tracking the Trends figure showing how global inequality affects the odds of surviving to the age of five.
• Data and analysis of the changing patterns of extreme poverty in regions of the world has been completely updated and heavily revised.
• Updates on global population; population projections 2050; fertility for the United States; mortality for the United States; population increase data for the entire world; data for income inequality for the people and nations of the world; data for wealth inequality for people and nations of the world; the extent of slavery in the world; patterns of debt owed by poor nations to rich countries; data on annual fertility and mortality; and all the data tracking global population increase.

16. Technology and the Environment
• Tracking the Trends figure showing the increasing levels of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere.
• Expanded theoretical analysis of environmental issues supported by new research.
• Both the theoretical analysis and the political analysis of environmental problems have been expanded and rewritten to greater currency and clarity.
• Updates on global population increase; global patterns of energy consumption; the production of solid waste in the United States; the global shortage of water; and the extent of global warming and public attitudes about this issue.

17. War and Terrorism
• Tracking the Trends figure assessing the world’s danger of technological catastrophe.
• Expanded discussion of children engaged in military combat in the United States and around the world.
• Updates on global military spending; the number of children engaged in warfare; the U.S. defense budget in dollar terms as in relation to the spending of other nations; the number of children engaged in military combat; the number of U.S. veterans; the number of U.S. veterans living below the poverty line; the reduction of nuclear arsenals as the result of arms limitation treaties; the share of our national leaders who have had military service; and the extent of terrorism in the world.