Research in Social Stratification and Mobility最新文献

The study of inequality of opportunity and its main drivers is a major task in the field of economics. This paper aims to estimate a comprehensive database of socio-economic variables for five African countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda, Malawi, and Nigeria) using imputation techniques, with the ultimate goal of approximating the degrees of intergenerational transmission and social mobility. To achieve this goal, the transition matrix methodology is used in three domains: education, occupation, and income. The results show that the domain with the highest levels of mobility, in general terms, is education, and the lowest, income. Key findings reveal significant variations in the levels of social mobility across these domains depending on the studied country, such as in income mobility with respect to parents: Ethiopia is at the top with a high percentage of individuals experiencing upward mobility, and Malawi at the bottom, with a high percentage of individuals experiencing downward mobility. Moreover, the mobility levels of individuals tend to be higher for mothers than for fathers, which implies a greater improvement when compared to the most vulnerable group, i.e., women. No very significant differences have been found in the levels of mobility between baron sons and women.

This study examines the social-cultural challenges of upward track mobility from vocational to academic tracking at the transition to upper secondary education in Germany. Within the highly stratified German education system, these challenges include habitual alienation from the family and milieu of origin. Using a Bourdieusian framework and data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), we examine the effect of these challenges on the choices for academic upper secondary education by addressing ambivalent parental expectations regarding social upward mobility and habitual loyalty to the family. The study explores how an immigrant origin and older siblings shape perceptions of these expectations and associated challenges, and thus influence the educational choices at the transition to upper secondary education.Linear probability models (N 2866) show that ambivalent parental expectations hinder the choice for academic upper secondary education. This effect was stronger for nonimmigrant students. Older siblings reduce this negative influence for both immigrant and non-immigrant students. We extend previous literature on educational choices of immigrant and non-immigrant youth by highlighting that ambivalent parental expectations may be a barrier to upward track mobility, moderated by older siblings.

In the present research we examine, first, the extent to which the Israeli public endorse wage-gaps between immigrants and comparable non-immigrant workers (employed in identical low-wage jobs), and second, whether the endorsement of wage discrimination against immigrants is associated with immigrants’ characteristics. Data for the analysis were obtained from a representative sample of the Jewish population in Israel (N = 600). We implemented a multifactorial survey experiment design including immigrants’ characteristics such as continent of origin, education, religion, and reason for migration. The experimental setup contained 252 vignettes. Vignette decks were randomly assigned to the respondents for evaluation of the fairness of the wage-gaps between immigrants and comparable non-immigrant workers. Analysis of the data leads to a twofold conclusion. First, justification of wage discrimination against immigrants is widespread. Second, justification of wage discrimination is influenced by immigrants’ characteristics, being most pronounced (even extreme) in the case of clearly defined “outgroup” populations (Muslims and Christians, asylum seekers and labor migrants) and least pronounced in the case of immigrants belonging to the dominant “in-group” population (Jews and repatriates). In addition, endorsement of discrimination tends to increase with respondents’ levels of prejudice, fear of cultural change, and economic threat. The findings and their meaning are discussed in light of theories on economic discrimination.

Past research on the relationship between computers and wages has revealed two stylized facts. First, workers who use a computer at work earn higher wages than similar workers who do not (termed as ‘the computer wage premium’). Second, women are more likely to use a computer at work than are men. Given the recognized computer wage premium and women’s advantage in computer use at work, we ask: Is the wage premium on using computers at work gender- or non-gender-specific? Given gendered processes operating at both the occupational and within-occupation levels, we expect that returns to computer usage are gender-bias. This contrasts the skill-biased technological change (SBTC) theory assumption that the theorized pathways through which computers boost earnings are non-gender-specific productivity-enhancing mechanisms. Analyzing occupational data on computer use at work from O*NET attached to the 1979–2016 Current Population Surveys (CPS) and individual-level data from the 2012 Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), we find that the computer wage premium is biased in favor of men at the occupation level. We conclude by suggesting that computer-based technologies relate to reproducing old forms of gender pay inequality due to gendered processes that operate mainly at the structural level (i.e., occupations) rather than at the individual level.

This study is the first to investigate the impact of short-time work (STW) schemes during the COVID-19 pandemic on earnings after STW. STW schemes were implemented to preserve employee–employer matches, support workers' incomes, and uphold consumption. Although workers faced temporary earnings losses under STW, it is unclear if the negative earnings effects of STW persisted or were limited to the STW spell. Therefore, this study uses a dynamic difference-in-difference (DiD) identification strategy with administrative data to identify any lasting STW effects on earnings. This approach accounts for factors that influenced worker selection into STW and tests for heterogeneous effects across subgroups of workers. We find lasting earnings losses that persisted beyond the STW participation itself. Most importantly, these earnings losses depended on the duration of STW exposure, with greater negative effects being more prominent in cases of long-term or recurring STW spells. Lasting, post-STW earnings losses tended to be more pronounced for white-collar jobs, while the largest losses were observed among men with blue-collar jobs whose STW spells exceeded one year.

Economic integration of immigrants reflects a stratified structure of the receiving country’s labor market. Gender is one of the most important factors stratifying the labor market. While the intersection of gender and immigrant status in the labor market has been examined, a possibility that immigration policies intervene in it is understudied. This study examines how Japan’s restrictive immigration policies intervene in the gender wage gap by analyzing data from the 2020 Basic Survey on Wage Structure. Results show different gender wage gaps among immigrants according to their visa type. While those with job-related visas experience smaller wage disparity with their male counterparts than do Japanese women, those with status-based visas experience equally large wage disparity. Application of the decomposition method revealed that the large gender wage gap among status-based immigrants is caused by higher return to age for men than for women and different distributions of occupations by gender. While the constraints imposed by restrictive immigration policies on labor immigrants regarding their work mitigate the differential treatment of men and women, the gendered structure of the Japanese labor market maintains itself in the long-run through the process of integrating immigrants.

A common assumption in the social stratification literature is that the lion’s share of people reaches occupational maturity quite early in working life, i.e., they end up in an occupation/class position and stay there. The conventional view is that career maturity is reached around the age of 35. By using Swedish longitudinal occupational biographies across six birth cohorts from 1925 to 1984, this study challenges this view. Our findings reveal substantial career transitions throughout working life, an increase across cohorts, and a wide variation in the age of the last class transition. This suggests that careers are not in general static positions from a certain age, but fluctuate over time. There are signs of a general slowing down of career transitions across working lives, but this comes later in life and to a smaller extent than expected. These findings suggest that research often based on cross sectional data, e.g. studies on intergenerational mobility and class differences in health, need to incorporate career mobility data. More research is needed to illuminate if the results of Sweden, in terms of a low and decreasing level of occupational maturity can be replicated in other countries.

A stable economic environment in a family lays the foundation for children’s healthy development, and income volatility is a key indicator of family economic (in)stability. Using longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this study investigates exposure to family income volatility and its social determinants for Chinese children during the period 2010–2018. The results show that Chinese children experienced high levels of family income volatility during 2010–2018, and childhood exposure to income volatility in China is closely related to both family socioeconomic characteristics and structural factors. Specifically, children from low-income families, with less-educated and non-state-sector-employed parents, and holding a rural hukou (household registration) are more likely to experience childhood economic instability. Given that children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families already face challenges associated with constrained socioeconomic resources, the fact that they are also more likely to live in a precarious economic environment may put them at a double disadvantage in early life.

People’s understanding of the drivers of inequality is a function of their position in the social structure. Nevertheless, the ways in which intergenerational social mobility is associated with opportunity beliefs remain under researched. Recent findings in cultural sociology suggest that individuals seldom update their beliefs, and that settled dispositions lead people to reproduce their beliefs in their adulthood. This study used a probabilistic and representative survey of Chinese citizens to explore how intergenerational social mobility relates to opportunity beliefs. China presents an interesting context to explore this question, since Chinese society is considered to be highly unequal yet highly tolerant of social inequalities. Our results indicate a U-shaped relationship between social class and opportunity beliefs. The upper class and farmers exhibit stronger meritocratic beliefs than middle-classes. Moreover, upwardly and downwardly mobile individuals show greater weights for origin and destination, respectively. Thus, opportunity beliefs are explained by the social class where they rank lower. These findings suggest that when beliefs are updated through social mobility, they interact with the mobility trajectory. In addition, the stronger meritocratic beliefs of the farmers’ class and the greater weight of social origin for upwardly mobile individuals could help explain the dormant social volcano in China.

Evidence suggests benefits of parental educational homogamy for infant and child well-being but ignores potential racial and ethnic variation in these benefits. Increasing disparities in infant health by maternal education and race, along with increasing educational sorting, raise questions about whether educational homogamy could contribute to these disparities. Drawing on a random sample of over 4 million live births in NVSS data from 2011 to 2020 and ordinary least squares regression, this study examines the relationship between infant health, parental educational similarity, and race and ethnicity. Our findings indicate a weak overall relationship between educational sorting and infant health at birth, with significant variation by race and ethnicity. In addition, absolute education levels and marital status more strongly predict infant health than educational assortative mating. Sensitivity analyses confirm the robustness of these findings across different modeling approaches and sample sizes. Our results indicate that parental educational sorting is only weakly related to infant health and cannot explain widening infant health gaps by race.