Despite widespread perceptions of elite US sport as meritocratic, there is little empirical research on the social origins of those who play college and professional sports in the US or how these vary by race. We use the case of American football, linking Entertainment and Sports Programming Network's national recruit rankings data on incoming college football players from 2007-2016 (N=929) with 2000 US Census data. Our study compares hometown socioeconomic and demographic indicators for black and white college athletes and then for those drafted into the National Football League. Findings show that the socioeconomic and demographic profiles of the hometowns producing elite football athletes vary by both athlete race and draft status. Black draftees come from denser, more socioeconomically disadvantaged and blacker hometowns than black non-drafted athletes, while white draftees come from less socioeconomically disadvantaged hometowns than white non-drafted athletes.
It has been argued that the narrowing of fertility differentials has been due to an increasing similarity in the function of children across socio-cultural groupings. The present research explores the relationship between the value placed on children and family size patterns and preferences for black, Indian, and white married men and women. The analysis reveals that values attached to children explain more of the variation in actual and desired fertility among men then among women, and among Indians than among whites and blacks. While the values placed on children may be converging, it is questionable whether these values represent a constant factor in childbearing tendencies.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.