Research in Social Stratification and Mobility最新文献

In the United States, post-secondary educational outcomes are stratified by gender, with women attending college and completing their degrees at higher rates. At the same time, student loan debt has become an ubiquitous part of the college process for many pursuing higher education, increasing the financial risks associated with the pursuit of higher education while lessening the financial rewards. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) of young adults who ever attended a post-secondary institution and growth curve models, we estimate gender disparities in student debt trajectories throughout young adulthood. Building on work on the racialization of the student debt landscape (Houle & Addo 2022), we also investigate the intersection of race and gender, and include both within race gender analyses and within gender racial analyses. Gender differences in student debt at baseline, or at the age of first college enrollment, are large and the gender debt gap grows at 1.2 % per year. We document evidence of a curvilinear relationship in student debt in young adulthood, with student debt accumulating at the beginning of the college enrollment period and the rate of increase declining over time as adults age. Women, who start the period with larger amounts of student debt, experience faster growth in their debt accumulation followed by lower declines relative to young adult men. These patterns are magnified among Black young adults, with the gender debt disparity between Black women and Black men growing 3.4 % annually. We find no association between gender and student debt trajectories among Latinx and White young adults. Within-gender models highlight the prevalence of the student debt crisis among Black women and Black men. Additional analyses suggest gender differences in debt trajectories are a function of postsecondary and young adult socioeconomic characteristics, reflecting broader societal inequalities that stem from structural elements related to post-secondary schooling and economic status. These patterns may inhibit wealth-building among women and Black adults in the United States.

The aim of this programmatic article is to spell out a three-method design for supporting micro-to-macro explanations based on social mechanisms. In this design, the experimental method is called on to strengthen the explanatory basis of the common survey-interview mix, against the background of growing interest in causal inference and experimentation across the social sciences. The proposal is articulated through the specific problem of the contribution of discrimination (micro process) to the generation of inequalities in mental health (macro outcome) between culturally stigmatized and non-stigmatized groups (macro predictor). The article motivates the research problem and the three-method design, offering a detailed discussion of the limitations of survey-based measures of perceived discrimination. Drawing on the literature on mixed methods, the relationships between the survey, the interview-based study and the field experiment are analyzed in terms of triangulation, development, and complementarity. The broader applicability of the proposed three-method design is illustrated with examples from the distinct fields of civic engagement and labor market inequalities.

Sociological research has long been interested in occupational evaluation. However, occupational research remains hampered by conceptual ambiguity and methodological problems. To address these issues, we present new indices of occupational prestige and occupational social value for 576 occupation titles aligned with the ILO International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08). A shorter core list with 130 occupation titles – one per ISCO-08 minor group – is also provided. Based on comprehensive and recent evidence from 2429 respondents, we carve out the evaluative landscape of occupations in the United Kingdom. We show how occupational prestige and occupational social value are correlated but distinct. A clear hierarchy appears, with highly educated occupations at the top and stigmatised or illicit occupations at the bottom. The study thus contributes to social stratification research and encourages reuse of the scores in future occupational research.

This study investigates wage outcomes of former temporary workers by distinguishing workers obtaining permanent jobs with the same employer from those who find permanent work with a new employer. With this distinction, we build on studies investigating the wage consequences of temporary jobs, which have thus far mainly focused on cross-sectional wage gaps and longer-term wage consequences without considering employer changes. We compare Germany and the UK as two prime examples of different labour market settings and look at labour market subgroups relevant for social stratification. We estimate fixed effects individual slopes regression with data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1995–2021), the British Household Panel Study (1992–2008), and the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2010–2021). Results show that in the rigid German and in the more flexible UK labour market, wage increase of former temporary workers is larger if the permanent job is obtained with the same employer, but only if it coincides with a job change within the firm. For transitions occurring on the same job, only workers in Germany experience wage increase. This wage increase is not higher compared to the wage increase of workers who switch employers. These patterns are similar across subgroups, with the largest deviances found for older workers in Germany.

We rely on Permanent Income to define a socioeconomic stratification system based on a latent trait measurement model using objective and widely available socioeconomic variables as reflective indicators, with an official panel of households spanning 2006–2020 in Spain. We obtain an objective and transparent stratification of Spanish society for these 15 years, and track social mobility at the household level between consecutive years that included economic expansion, a major recession, economic recovery and a major pandemic.We have quantified social mobility (greater in the extreme strata) in each of the periods of growth, crisis and economic recovery. Crisis derived from COVID-19 has been more drastic and has affected more the consumption of households under 65 years of age or with few members. In Spain, measures adopted against the effects of the COVID crisis have generated less inequality than those adopted during the Big Recession of 2008.

Research in several advanced economies has found that the descendants of immigrants tend to experience persistent difficulties in entering the labour market. This article tests whether social capital contributes to the disadvantage of descendants of immigrants in the school-to-work transition when compared to their native-background peers in Sweden. The study uses the CILS4EU survey, which provides information on friendship ties measured at age 15 and labour market outcomes at age 19. This allows for an analysis of networks formed before labour market entrance, an extensive control setup, and a comparison of measures of outgoing, incoming, and reciprocated friendship ties. The results show that the descendants of immigrants have access to less social capital measured as employed friends, but that they are as likely as natives to use their contacts to obtain a job. The returns to social capital are similar in terms of unemployment risk, but descendants of immigrants have a lower payoff when it comes to earnings. The study concludes that social capital contributes to, but is not the main driver of their labour market disadvantage in the school-to-work transition.

Using two administrative and survey-based datasets from Hungary, I look at how children from different socioeconomic backgrounds update their educational aspirations in response to having to repeat a grade late in primary school. I find that grade retention is detrimental to aspirations and later secondary school track choice, and on average, it affects children of lower socioeconomic backgrounds more adversely. The average effect masks heterogeneities by the reasons for repeating: those children who are likely to repeat seventh grade due to poor mathematics performance do not change their aspirations significantly after retention, regardless of their socioeconomic background. However, they are less likely to attend a secondary school track that provides access to tertiary education. As we move towards higher performers in mathematics – and consequently, more heterogeneous reasons for repeating –, retention results in a larger drop in aspirations and the probability of a secondary track ending with a high school diploma. In both outcomes, high socioeconomic status largely and, in some cases, entirely offsets the adverse effects.

The well-being implications of intergenerational educational mobility have been extensively studied, yet the focus predominantly lies on primary movers—individuals who themselves move up or down the educational ladder. Less is known about the impact of adult children’s educational mobility on their parents’ subjective well-being. Moreover, the role of family structures and gender dynamics in shaping the well-being outcomes of such mobility has often been overlooked. The study employs the Diagonal Mobility Model to estimate the effects of net mobility on subjective well-being, independently of both parents’ (origin) and their adult children’s (destination) educational levels, using data from the 2010 China Family Panel Studies. The results show that the subjective well-being of both generations was influenced by origin and destination, with a more pronounced effect from their own education. Notably, downward mobility adversely affected individuals’ and their parents’ subjective well-being, a phenomenon observed exclusively among those in only-child families. Among these parents, mothers with an upwardly mobile daughter reported the highest life satisfaction. These findings point to a shift in the traditional gendered parent-child dynamics and underscore the adverse consequences of downward mobility that sway both generations in only-child families.

School closures and remoted learning during the COVID-19 pandemic have negatively affected students worldwide, particularly those from disadvantaged families. This study examines the experiences of remote learning in county key high schools in China, which link selected rural students with urban educational resources and future social mobility. Our qualitative data suggest that during the school closure, the cultivation of a learning habitus of hardworking sprits and aspiration of upward mobility at school was disrupted, despite the devoted efforts of teachers and staff, and the students largely felt lost in their home environment in rural villages. Only a few of the students were pulled back to the school learning habitus by committed teachers, educated family members, or self-disciplining, combating the adverse impacts of COVID-19 related school closures. Implications for habitus change, remote learning, county key high schools, and educational development in rural China are also discussed.