Patrick Sharkey

Graduate Student in Sociology and Social Policy

Biographical Note

Pat Sharkey is a fifth year doctoral candidate in Sociology and Social Policy. He is also a doctoral fellow in the Multidisciplinary Progam in Inequality and Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government. In academic year 2006-2007 Pat will be a research fellow at the Weatherhead Center's Project on Justice, Welfare and Economics, and at Harvard's Institute for Quanititative Social Science. Pat's most recent publication is a forthcoming article titled "Navigating Dangerous Streets: The Sources and Consequences of Street Efficacy," which will be published in the American Sociological Review in the Fall of 2006. His dissertation research examines the persistence of racial inequality in residential environments over the life course and across generations. Pat has received three fellowships and grants for his dissertation research, including a fellowship from the Weatherhead Center, a research grant from the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and a grant from the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy.

11/16/2006

Curriculum Vitae

Research Interests

Mobility across neighborhood environments; the relationship between neighborhood inequality and economic mobility; crime/violence; quantitative methods; urban social policy.

Prospectus Title

“The Enduring Inequality of Race and Place: Racial Inequality in the Neighborhood Environment over the Life Course and across Generations”

Committee

Robert Sampson (chair), William Julius Wilson, Christopher Winship

Abstract

Despite the resurgence of interest in the neighborhood as a dimension of stratification, fundamental questions about continuity and change in families’ residential environments remain unanswered. My dissertation draws on the extensive literature on economic and social mobility in America to examine contextual mobility, defined as the extent to which inequalities in neighborhood environments persist over the life course and across generations. Using two data sources that track individuals’ neighborhood environments as they change over time—the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics—I analyze the persistence and transmission of neighborhood environments, and the processes by which neighborhood inequality is generated and maintained. Preliminary findings suggest that the neighborhood is an extremely rigid dimension of stratification. I find that racial inequalities in the neighborhood environment are likely to persist over individual lifetimes and across successive generations of family members. In particular, African-Americans are extremely unlikely to advance out of America’s poorest neighborhoods over time, suggesting that the persistence of the ghetto in the lives of African-American families represents a fundamental, and enduring, dimension of racial inequality in America.

Contact

617-496-5794 (FAX)

Department of Sociology:
460 William James Hall

Kennedy School of Government:
413 Taubman