Working Papers

USA: A Century of Difference

USA: A Century of Difference is a project funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, located at the University of California, Berkeley, and led by sociologists Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer. Tasked to draw on the 2000 census, this project will describe Americans at the beginning of the 21st century. The project will report on how Americans live, work, consume, and pray. And it will, by drawing on a century of data, describe how Americans developed came to be who they were in 2000.

A major theme is the tension between diversity and sameness that has persisted throughout American history. Distinct cultural heritages contributed to America and different ways of life emerged throughout its 200 years, and yet Americans coalesce around common principles: belief in God, in democracy, in the just reward for hard work, and in freedom of choice, for example. This project is focused on the American diversity at the turn of the millennium -- ethnic, religious, familial, occupational, and material diversity -- and< on America's cultural constants.

Working Papers

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