Study Says Congress Unrepresentative of U.S. Ethnics (12/26/76)

Study Says Congress Unrepresentative of U.S. Ethnics

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Based on the present make-up of the U.S. Congress, a white Protestant child born into an upper-class occupational home has a 20-to-1 better chance of being elected to Congress in his lifetime than a Catholic child born to working class parents, according to a new study issued here, wrote Jim Castelli in an article circulated by the Catholic News Service.

The study found that the 94th Congress "is extremely unrepresentative of the social class, ethnic and religious identities of the American people."

And, the study suggests, this fact may help account for reported low levels of participation in the political process by Catholic ethnics and blacks and other groups who are underrepresented in Congress.

The study was conducted by the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs, an affiliate of the U.S. Catholic Conference.

The Center report was based on a comparison of the religious, ethnic and social class backgrounds of members of Congress with the U.S. population at large. The report has responses from 92 percent of the Congress.

Gerson Green and Donald Shea, who conducted the study, said the inability of Americans of working-class backgrounds to elect representatives of similar backgrounds indicate either that these people do not know what they want or that they "are convinced that only Americans of upper strata occupational families, primarily Protestant ethnic in cultural identity, are those best fit to rule the nation."

"Our findings," Green and Shea said, "are supportive of the argument that working-class, ethnic identity is generally associated with a very limited leadership role in American political life.

"The data can be interpreted to lend credence to the argument that our social life produces a condition of working-class backgrounds."

Among the study's findings:

* While Protestants outnumber Catholics two to one in society at large, they outnumber them three to one in Congress; 62.2 percent of the members of Congress and 56.2 percent of the national population are white Protestant ethnics, while 21.3 percent of Congress and 26 percent of the overall population is Catholic - 5.5 percent of the total U.S. population, but only 9.9 percent of the members of Congress are Hispanic Catholic.

Blacks and Hispanics combined make up 18 percent of the total population, but only four percent of Congress.

Episcopalians and Presbyterians make up only three percent of the national population, but make up 25 percent of the Congress.
Protestant ethnics have the most conservative voting records in Congress while Catholic ethnic voting is "clearly liberal."
75 percent of the American people are from working-class backgrounds, but only 22 percent of members of Congress are.
15 percent of the nation's population comes from upper-class families, compared to 60 percent of the Congress.
The Senate is more unrepresentative of the general population than the House based on social class, ethnic and religious background.
People of rural, entrepreneurial backgrounds are overrepresented in the Senate by 15 to 1 and the House by eight to one over their presence in the general population.

| Home Page |