Research in Social Stratification and Mobility最新文献

Educational decisions are affected by geographical accessibility, which may have far-reaching consequences for young people’s future educational pathways. In this paper, we examine the extent to which geographical distance to educational institutions may moderate young people’s applications to upper secondary education in terms of both the track and the gender-(a)typicality of vocational fields of study they apply to. Our study relies on rich register-based data of complete cohorts of 16-year-olds applying to Finnish upper secondary institutions, linked with geographical information on their closest educational alternatives. We find that travel time to the academic track is more decisive than the distance to vocational schools, with geographical accessibility being more significant for boys’ rather than for girls’ application patterns. Moreover, distance sensitivity varied by social origin, with daughters of low-educated parents and sons of medium-educated parents particularly likely to adjust their upper secondary application to the geographical accessibility of educational alternatives. However, we find some indications that particularly girls from lower-educated social backgrounds are more prepared to consider fields of study not typical for their gender if they are more geographically accessible than key alternatives. No such gender-atypical substitutions were evident among boys. We discuss the implications of these findings in the context of explanatory approaches based on risk aversion and (gender) socialization.

“Deaths of despair” – deaths caused by suicide, drug use, and alcohol use – have increased among non-Hispanic whites who do not have a college degree. We analyze confidential-use data from the National Center for Health Statistics that contains death certificates from 2005 to 2017 (total of 21,177,490 records) linked with measures of local labor market activity. We show that deaths of despair are proportionally larger among Native Americans than non-Hispanic white Americans and that economic conditions have a different relationship with deaths of despair among Native Americans than for non-Hispanic white Americans. Improvements in economic conditions are associated with decreased deaths from drug use, alcohol use, and suicide for non-Hispanic white Americans. On the other hand, in counties with higher labor force participation rates, lower unemployment, and higher ratios of employees to residents, there are significantly higher proportions of Native American deaths attributed to alcohol and drug use.

This study, using a 10% sample from China’s 1% inter-census population surveys for 2015, examines patterns of educational disparities between Han and Muslim Chinese. I use enrollment rates among children aged 6–15 and completion of junior high school among children aged 16–19 to capture access to education, and completed years of schooling and completion of tertiary education among adults aged 25–55 to measure educational attainment. To reflect the interplays between individual and contextual factors in shaping ethnic variations in education, I explore the moderation effects of gender, Islamic heritage, and residential concentration. Findings show that Muslim girls are not necessarily subject to double disadvantages in education. The only negative interactions between gender and ethnicity are among inland Muslims in inland northwestern China. Islamic heritage and region also lead to varied patterns. Compared to the Han majority, Muslims have unfavorable educational outcomes in northwestern China and comparable educational outcomes in non-northwestern China. This study highlights the importance of understanding China’s educational stratification mechanisms drawing on the interplays between socioeconomic and ideational contexts.

This study explores the lasting impact of single-sex versus coeducational high schools on gender disparities in adult life in South Korea, which is a country characterized by marked gender inequality. Leveraging Seoul’s unique policy of randomly assigning students to high schools, we examine how school type influences attainment of bachelor’s degrees, working full time, and attitudes towards competition, risk taking, and working mothers. Our findings reveal that adult women in their 30s and 40s from all-girls high schools are more likely to earn at least a bachelor’s degree, work full time, enjoy competition, take risks, and hold more positive attitudes towards working mothers compared to those from coeducational high schools. The effects of all-boys schools are not statistically significant across most outcomes. Our research highlights the potential of single-sex schooling, particularly all-girls schools, to help address gender inequality in Korea. This study fills a gap in the research by looking at the long-term impacts of single-sex high-school education on six work-related outcomes and suggests that such schools can help reduce gender disparities. Further research is needed to understand the specific mechanisms through which single-sex schooling influences these outcomes.

Mothers earn less than comparable childless women, and such motherhood penalty differs in magnitude by women’s socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Prior research, however, has rarely considered how the effect of parenthood on women’s income may also depend on the characteristics of their partners. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies 2010–2018, we examine how the effects of motherhood on women’s earnings and within-couple income inequality vary by couples’ educational pairings in China. A large educational gap between spouses–hypergamy or hypogamy–exacerbates the motherhood penalty on a woman’s individual income and her share of the couple’s combined income. However, when the educational gap between spouses is moderate, hypergamy lessens the motherhood penalty on women’s individual income, whereas hypogamy mitigates the penalty on their share of couples’ combined earnings. In the context of China’s declining fertility, narrowing gender gap in education, and widening gender pay gap, these findings provide descriptive empirical evidence on how the motherhood penalty varies by educational assortative mating and underscore the significance of considering couple dynamics in understanding the motherhood penalty.

The status exchange hypothesis of union formation has been extensively examined in different societies. In this study, we explore beauty–status exchange in mate selection in China. Based on the 2010–2018 waves of the China Family Panel Studies, we apply a new method that directly estimates the magnitude of exchange by considering beauty–status intermarriage as a treatment. Our results show that in China women exchange attractive appearance for men’s higher socioeconomic status, but men’s physical attractiveness does not exchange for women’s higher socioeconomic status. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the traditional marriage exchange pattern of “wife’s beauty matching with husband’s talent” mainly persists among women with lower levels of education and from families of lower socioeconomic status.

Despite the increasingly popular perception that elite colleges’ reliance on high-stakes standardized tests to select students exacerbates social inequality, researchers have not demonstrated that a reduced emphasis on such tests actually alters individuals’ admission outcomes. Using all applications submitted in 2022 to National Taiwan University, the most prestigious university in Taiwan, we show who among the applicants would have been admitted under the country’s prior college admission system, which was entirely based on high-stakes standardized test scores, and contrast them with those actually admitted in the current system, which emphasizes holistic evaluations and considers many other criteria. The results indicate that for the majority of students the admission outcomes would be unchanged. Even among those whose outcomes would differ, class backgrounds are not clearly related to the direction of change in the outcome. Rather than students of upper- or lower-class backgrounds, women are the unequivocal beneficiary from the decreased reliance on high-stakes standardized tests. The analysis suggests that the better high school grades and more comprehensive application materials submitted by women applicants contribute to a considerable part of the female advantage in a more holistic admission system. Evidence from this quasi-field experiment has implications for how changes in the structural elements of the educational system affect elite college access.

This study considers the multigenerational consequences of wealth transmission for the transition to young adulthood. Using a wider set of outcomes than has previously been considered, and by analyzing parental and grandparental wealth simultaneously, this work underscores the salience of multiple generations of wealth as a predictor for young adult well-being. Data comes from the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics on a sample of youth followed from mid-adolescence until the age of 20. Results from linear regression models indicate that parental wealth was associated with increases in the probability of college attendance and steady employment and inversely associated with the likelihood of nonmarital birth and idleness. Grandparental wealth predicted non-educational outcomes at least as well as parental wealth did and explained more variance in young adults’ outcomes when parental wealth was lower. The association between parental wealth and non-educational outcomes suggest that wealth may inform young adults’ broader life course by predicting outcomes other than college attendance. Grandparental wealth may serve a compensatory function for children with low parental wealth. Results suggest that persistently low wealth across multiple generations may impede the successful transition to young adulthood.

This study examines subjective inequality in South Korea, stressing the multi-dimensional and domain-specific nature of subjective inequality with its broader socio-political implications. Based on a comprehensive survey of current inequalities in Korea, three dimensions of subjective inequality (perception, belief, and discontent) are explored over two principal domains of inequality (opportunities and outcomes). In particular, the new measure of subjective inequality, inequality discontent, is first developed and proposed in this study. The results show that Koreans perceive the level of outcome inequalities (income and wealth) as higher than opportunity inequalities (education and employment), but interestingly, they also believe that inequality of outcomes should be higher than that of opportunities. The level of discontent, however, was found to be equally high across all domains and areas. The utility of discontent as a new concept of subjective inequality is empirically tested against regression analysis of redistributive government interventions. This emphasis on the multi-dimensional and domain-specific understanding of inequalities better elucidates the public’s reactions to socioeconomic inequalities and enables the development of more appropriate inequality policies in Korea and beyond.

This study investigates how higher education expansion changes gender gaps in analytic skill usage on the job in the United States, and its variation across fields of study at the bachelor’s degree level. The present study proposes two patterns for graduates of a given field: One where educational expansion reinforces gender gaps, and another where it dissolves them. Using data from four different cohort studies, we find that educational expansion leads to less analytic skill usage at the bachelor’s degree level. However, this is not universally true, and educational expansion produces very different effects by gender and field of study. Thus, while multiple theories about educational expansion and majors explain these patterns, the specific applicability of them depends on the field of study itself.