Life & Letters Magazine

Department of Sociology

Why Do People in Hawaii Live 7 Years Longer than People in Mississippi?

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Add living a longer life to the list of reasons to move to Hawaii, which tops the list in a national study on average life expectancy. The study showed that living somewhere with more economic regulations and policy protections for marginalized groups may be the key for a clean bill of health. “We run the […]

Rebooting Our Lives After COVID-19

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The world’s new reality amid the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing us to confront issues and critically think about how to revive communities slowly, safely and sustainably.

Smile, You’re on Camera: Behind the Lens of 24/7 Surveillance

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“Even a strutting exhibitionist has something to hide: certain diary entries, genetic predispositions, financial mistakes, medical crises, teenage embarrassments, antisocial compulsions, sexual fantasies, radical dreams,” writes Randolph Lewis. “We all have something that we want to shield from public view. The real question is: Who gets to pull the curtains? And increasingly: How will we […]

Where India Goes

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UT Austin economist Dean Spears and sociologist Diane Coffey founded the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics (r.i.c.e.) in 2011 with the goal of improving health and well-being in India. They focus on an important driver of economic development: the health of children. Despite rapid economic growth, India’s infant and under-five mortality rate continues to be […]

An Educated Decision

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Voter turnout in the U.S. is below turnout in most other advanced democracies, with only about 60 percent of eligible voters participating in the past four presidential elections and about 40 percent participating in midterm elections. While prior research indicates that those with higher levels of education are more likely to vote, new research shows […]

The Cost of Crime

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Despite crime rates being at a historic low, the United States is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to achieve an 80 percent recidivism rate. We’ve spent $1 trillion during the past 40 years on criminal justice, not including $1 trillion more on the war on drugs. William Kelly, a professor of sociology at The […]

The Criminal Justice System is a Massive Failure. Here’s a Solution

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Contrary to logic, intuition and common sense, the hard fact is that punishment does not reduce criminal offending. This may be a difficult one for some to swallow, especially since the past 45 years and more than $1 trillion have been spent on punishment as the centerpiece of American criminal justice policy. We essentially bet […]

Your Turn to Do the Dishes

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Most young women – and men – prefer shared household responsibilities There’s no shortage of advice for women these days about how to balance work and family — everything from becoming a supermom who can “lean in” at the workplace and do it all, to embracing the role of a full-time homemaker. But when given […]

Depression: Making Treatment Personal

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For the estimated 350 million people worldwide who suffer from depression, the health consequences go far beyond “feeling down.” In fact, it is a leading cause of disability worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people with symptoms of depression will never receive treatment, and for those diagnosed with major […]

Borderline: The Politics, Law and Identity of Immigration

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Temperatures hovered around the triple digits in deep South Texas when the children arrived on the U.S.-Mexico border. They traveled alone, without parents. They traveled from the faraway mountains of Guatemala and El Salvador and the depths of the world’s most violent city — San Pedro Sula in Honduras. Their numbers grew over months until […]

The Benefits to Paid Family Leave That Nobody is Talking About

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This month marks 22 years since the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act. The FMLA was an important first step toward improving the lives of American workers by helping them secure unpaid leave from their jobs for a variety of family issues, while protecting their employment security. But the FMLA left much to […]

Early Poverty Linked to Obesity in Women

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Adolescent girls who grow up in poor households are more likely than their male counterparts to become overweight or obese, according to a new study by Tetyana Pudrovska, assistant professor of sociology. The study, published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, shows long-lasting consequences of economic hardship in childhood for the risk of […]

Sociology Celebrates 100 Years

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This year, the Department of Sociology celebrated its 100-year anniversary. Looking back at the department’s many achievements within the past century, this is a milestone worthy of a big celebration. In addition to its top national rankings, the department is home to an impressive number of eminent social scientists—from C. Wright Mills, whose seminal works […]

Keeping A Pulse On Population Health

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A few years ago, a Plan II Honors student in Marc Musick’s sociology lecture came to him with a question. Musick had been talking about the shortage of doctors in rural and inner city areas. The student had grown up in the Rio Grande Valley and hoped to go on to medical school. Why, he […]

The Road to Gender Equity: Still Under Construction

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Christine Williams has heard her share of conflicting arguments about gender equality in the sociology course she’s taught for more than two decades at The University of Texas at Austin. But there is always one question that gives her pause: “Women have achieved equality, so why is feminism relevant?” “I’m always taken aback when students […]

Food for Thought

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Government Professor Bartholomew “Bat” Sparrow first got the idea to teach a class about food from his wife, who had worked at Whole Foods for eight years. The result was an undergraduate course—“The Politics of Food in America”—that uses food as a lens through which to view the entire U.S. political system. “The idea was […]

For Women, Job Authority Adds to Depression Symptoms

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Job authority increases symptoms of depression among women, but decreases them among men, according to a new study from University of Texas at Austin sociologist Tetyana Pudrovska. “Women with job authority — the ability to hire, fire and influence pay — have significantly more symptoms of depression than women without this power,” said Pudrovska, the […]

Examining the Economic Self

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Many people dream of getting rich, of leaving the drudgery of work for a life of financial freedom. Daniel Fridman, an assistant professor of sociology and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, investigated how groups of people in New York City and his native Buenos Aires attempt to take control of their […]

Millennial Nation

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A Generational Look at Education, Money and Work Empathetic. Impatient. Innovative. Unfocused. Rational. Naive. Excited. These are the words millennials in the College of Liberal Arts use when they’re asked to describe themselves. However, it’s a question they’re not often asked. Plenty of people, from journalists to researchers to employers, are looking to define who […]

Making the Grade

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Strategies for Improving Education in America Few dispute the value of education, but discussions about how our nation should improve it are becoming more intense and polarized. Of all the competing arguments—more technology, smaller classrooms, improved teacher training, universal pre-kindergarten—most people would agree that America’s education system needs to improve, and soon. According to recent […]