How do some families manage to entrench themselves in the upper class for many generations while others do not? Bringing together economic sociology, political sociology, and stratification, I introduce a concept for the study of multigenerational persistence at the top of a stratified society: kinship interlocks. Kinship interlocks are portions of a kinship network that closely combine great wealth, status, and power. Just as board interlocks connect corporate elites through overlapping board memberships, kinship interlocks connect economic, social, and political elites through family ties. Using a mixed-methods analysis, I find that the intimate exchange of resources in kinship interlocks generates upper-class persistence via two primary mechanisms: it protects kin from economic, legal, and social risk, and it propels kin into higher strata. Processes of kin formation and intimate exchange are co-constitutive with systems of gender, sexuality, and race, such that the most durable portions of an upper class are especially heteronormative and racially dominant. The analysis is based on a unique dataset consisting of the full upper class and all economic, political, and social elites in the first 122 years of Dallas, Texas, along with all mutual family ties.

Global demographic changes in recent decades have sharply altered the contexts in which governments provide education. Focusing on primary education, we demonstrate, first, that recent demographic trends have been highly polarizing for education systems worldwide. Persistent expansionary pressures burden some of the least‐resourced educational systems, whereas these pressures are reversing in wealthier countries with higher educational expenditures. Second, we document that global educational systems have adapted to narrow gaps in student‐ or child‐teacher ratios, despite polarizing demographic trends. Third, we show that system responses vary where school‐age cohorts are declining, although little is known about the impacts of system responses. And, finally, examining Korea, a case at the leading edge of the transition to population scarcity, we demonstrate that educational system consolidation can introduce new salience to geospatial hierarchies and the political economy of allocative decisions. Policy decentralization and popular resistance stymied a trend in which nonmetropolitan areas bore the brunt of primary school closures and teacher losses, while metropolitan areas saw increases in schools and teachers despite student declines. Research is sorely needed to understand how national educational systems are impacted by and adapting to the disparate forces of population growth and scarcity.

We explore the empirical puzzle of how conflicting attitudes and desires evolve and exert competing behavioral influences, focusing on the socially contentious case of premarital sex among young women in the United States. Leveraging intensive panel data collected for up to 2.5 years among a large, population-based sample of unmarried women aged 18–22, we show that women’s sexual attitudes and desires often follow distinct trajectories that eventually come into conflict because, on average, their desires are more socially malleable than their attitudes. When attitudes and desires disaccord, young women’s sexual activity and contraceptive use generally reflect their desires more than their attitudes, especially as their desires intensify. Examining attitudes and desires together reveals new insights into how young adults experience and maneuver socially contentious decisions and further illuminates one reason why attitudes are imperfect predictors of behavior.

NIMBY—or “Not in my Back Yard”—opposition against renters has long defined segregation and housing markets in the United States. Recent years, however, have seen the rise of a new phenomenon: YIMBY or “Yes in my Back Yard” efforts, which have aimed to expand affordable housing supply for renters in lower-poverty places that have long restricted it. The clash between NIMBY and YIMBY poses a problem: how do actors effectuate change in markets where they face difficulties mobilizing and building coalitions? This article presents data on an example where developers have made demonstrable affordable housing gains: properties funded by the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit have been widely built in suburban Chicago, specifically in lower-poverty areas. Drawing on interviews with the developers who build this housing, our findings show that developers often favor what we refer to as anti-collective action—tactics meant to sideline and circumvent audiences that developers deem unwinnable, rather than persuade or mobilize them. Findings therefore urge more attention to actors’ perceptions of the possibilities and limits of collective action—what we refer to as coalitional latitude—which vary by setting, and condition the choices and tactics that actors pursue. We explore implications for sociological work on the processes and conditions of change in economic fields.