New directions for the study of Australia’s fertility decline

Most studies of Australia’s historical fertility decline have emphased the similarities of the pace and composition of the decline with those of the United Kingdom, continental European countries, and other colonies settled by the British. Recent scholarship has questioned the usefulness of focusing on aggregate data that give misleading impressions of homogeneity. Preferred methodological approaches take a holistic view to the determinants of fertility change within a local context. The scope for analogous studies in Australia is considered, through a review of potential source materials and research questions.     

The dynamics of credentialism: Ireland from bust to boom (and back again)

The relationship between educational qualifications and labour market outcomes has been perhaps the dominant theme in research on school to work transitions. A range of explanations has been offered for this relationship, but such explanations have often been quite static in nature or assumed that any trend is linear. This article explores the dynamics of educational credentialism using Ireland as a case study. Using data from the national School Leavers’ Survey for the period 1984-2007, it examines the way in which two dimensions of education - level and grades - have influenced early labour market outcomes over a period shifting from high unemployment to dramatic employment growth. The analyses presented point to both long-term and short-term changes in the education-employment relationship. An increase in the proportion of young people with upper secondary qualifications is found to result in a growing gap in employment chances between the more and less qualified. Furthermore, employers are found to rely on different educational signals depending on broader economic conditions, with grades assuming a more important role in accessing employment when jobs are scarce. It is argued that the Irish example points to a more comprehensive framework for understanding the dynamics of credentialism.     

Gender gaps in early educational achievement

This paper analyzes the source of the gender gap in third-grade numeracy and reading. We adopt an Oaxaca-Blinder approach and decompose the gender gap in educational achievement into endowment and response components. Our estimation relies on unusually rich panel data from the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Children in which information on child development reported by parents and teachers is linked to each child’s results on a national, standardized achievement test. We find that girls in low- and middle-socio-economic-status (SES) families have an advantage in reading, while boys in high-SES families have an advantage in numeracy. Girls score higher on their third-grade reading tests in large part because they were more ready for school at age 4 and had better teacher-assessed literacy skills in kindergarten. Boys’ advantage in numeracy occurs because they achieve higher numeracy test scores than girls with the same education-related characteristics.     

Trends in public attitudes toward educational spending

During the 1970s, only about half of the adult American population wanted to allocate more money to education. But in the 1980s, almost two-thirds of those surveyed have wanted to spend more on education. Using the 1972–86 NORC General Social Surveys (of which there are a dozen replications — each with about 1500 respondents), this paper outlines the sources of this increase in support for educational spending. Over time, while education has been consistently given a higher priority by members of younger birth cohorts, and respondents educated beyond high school, racial differences have narrowed and regional differences have been reversed. In this decade, whites and non-Southerners are increasingly supportive of more spending on education than they were earlier. Finally, while rural/urban differences on education as a national spending priority have remained, this trend is less independent of larger social forces than the others. These results imply that to be most effective in producing increased allocations from public sources, educators and their political supporters should recognize those particular segments of the population who may be most responsive to calls for increased funding.     

Intergenerational equity by educational attainments in France

Journal of Population Research - This article analyses the development of inequalities across the lifespan and generations in France using a pseudo-panel developed from successive waves of the...     

Market transition,educational disparities,and family strategies in rural china: New evidence on gender stratification and development

Two theoretical perspectives have dominated debates about the impact of development on gender stratification: modernization theory, which argues that gender inequalities decline with economic growth, and the "women in development" perspective, which argues that development may initially widen gender gaps. Analyzing cross-sectional surveys and time-series data from China, this article indicates the relevance of both perspectives: while girls' educational opportunities were clearly more responsive than boys' to better household economic circumstances, the era of market transition in the late 1970s and early 1980s failed to accelerate and, in fact, may have temporarily slowed progress toward gender equity.     

Urban-rural and educational differentials in marital status in China

Since 1950, laws aimed at delaying marriage have been 1 of the major means of slowing population growth in China, where marriage is nearly universal. Age at marriage has risen in recent decades, but not to the same extent in all localities. This article uses cross-tabulated data from China's 1982 census to assess the effects of urban-rural residence and educational level on the ages at which men and women have been marrying. The data also reveal the effects of residence and education on widowhood, divorce, and current marital status. As expected, exposure to development, indicated by urban residence and higher education, is associated with later marriage, but it also increases the likelihood of ever marrying, especially for men. Women's tendency to seek social mobility by marrying men from economically more developed areas results in bachelorhood for a substantial percentage of rural men, especially those who are illiterate.     

Monitoring and interpreting turning points in educational indicators

Educational indicators are statistical time series that reflect the state of some element of the educational system. Most turning points in educational indicators are not cyclical, but respond to major societal events. Three examples are presented: The probability of a 10th grader continuing to the 11th grade has increased linearly for 60 years, being affected positively by unemployment and negatively by increase in GNP per capita and by military expansion. Baccalaureate degrees per high school graduate four years earlier declined with the expansion of secondary education following the 1890's, rising after World War I, falling as the Depression approached. A major turning point occurred after World War II and the indicator peaked in 1950. A current downward turning point in school enrollment rate of 18–19 year old males may have been prompted by a change in selective service policies granting exemptions to college enrollees. Continuous monitorship of educational indicators would facilitate the development of policy and programs to adjust to dysfunctional educational trends.     

Migration background and educational tracking

Research on immigrants’ educational disadvantages documents substantial immigrant–native achievement gaps in standardized student assessments. Exploiting data from the German PIRLS extension, we find that second-generation immigrants also receive worse grades and teacher recommendations for secondary school tracks than natives, which cannot be explained by differences in student achievement tests and general intelligence. Second-generation immigrants’ less favorable socioeconomic background largely accounts for this additional disadvantage, suggesting that immigrants are disproportionately affected by prevailing social inequalities at the transition to secondary school. We additionally show that differences in track attendance account for a substantial part of the immigrant–native wage gap in Germany.     

Patterns and trends of educational mating in Korea

This study examines the patterns and trends in the association between wives' and husbands' educational attainment during 1950-79 in Korea. Log-linear analysis traces the educational mating of successive marriage cohorts using Korean censuses. The most prominent feature in educational mating in Korea over time has been a rapid increase in college homogamy during 1960-79, which has increased 3 times every decade since the 1950s. This increase reflects the increasing rigidity of the status order in Korea during the 1960s and 1970s. This result is consistent with the conflict perspective which argues that the dominant strata consolidates its class culture though homogamous marriages. From 1970 to 1979 hypergamy increased in Korea, sustaining the traditional marriage pattern while Korea underwent industrialization. Although Korean couples who married during the 1970-79 period have greater educational hypogamy, it is thought to be due to demographic changes in age heterogamous couples.     

Trends in educational assortative marriage from 1940 to 2003

This paper reports trends in educational assortative marriage from 1940 to 2003 in the United States. Analyses of census and Current Population Survey data show that educational homogamy decreased from 1940 to 1960 but increased from 1960 to 2003. From 1960 to the early 1970s, increases in educational homogamy were generated by decreasing intermarriage among groups of relatively well-educated persons. College graduates, in particular; were increasingly likely to marry each other rather than those with less education. Beginning in the early 1970s, however; continued increases in the odds of educational homogamy were generated by decreases in intermarriage at both ends of the education distribution. Most striking is the decline in the odds that those with very low levels of education marry up. Intermarriage between college graduates and those with "some college" continued to decline but at a more gradual pace. As intermarriage declined at the extremes of the education distribution, intermarriage among those in the middle portion of the distribution increased. These trends, which are similar for a broad cross section of married couples and for newlyweds, are consistent with a growing social divide between those with very low levels of education and those with more education in the United States.     

Family size and educational attainment in England and Wales

In this paper, we use linked census data from England and Wales to investigate whether having a large number of siblings leads to lower educational attainment. There is a large literature suggesting that with large sibship size, parental resources will be diluted and this, in turn, will lead to lower educational attainment. Using twin births and the sex composition of the sibling group as instrumental variables, we find that the evidence of a family size effect on educational attainment is rather uncertain. Similar results are obtained when we use occupational attainment as the dependent variable. We also demonstrate the confounding of birth order and family size effects, and show that an adjusted birth order index proposed by Booth and Kee provides an effective solution to this estimation problem.     

The educational attainment of second-generation immigrants in The Netherland

Since the mid-1960s the Netherlands has had a positive net immigration, mainly because of man power recruitment from Turkey and Morocco and immigration from the former Dutch colony of Surinam. Immigrants havea weak labor market position, which is related to their educational leveland language skills. Children and grandchildren of immigrants are expected to have a better chance of integration into Dutch society. In this paper we investigate whether this is true with respect to the educational attainment of second-generation immigrants from Turkey, Morocco, Surinam and the Dutch Antilles.The authors thank an anonymous referee and both editors for helpful comments. Responsible editors: David Card and Christoph M. Schmidt.     

The educational gradient of childbearing within cohabitation in Europe

Nearly every European Country has experienced some increase in nonmarital childbearing, largely due to increasing births within cohabitation. Relatively few studies in Europe, however, investigate the educational gradient of childbearing within cohabitation or how it changed over time. Using retrospective union and fertility histories, we employ competing risk hazard models to examine the educational gradient of childbearing in cohabitation in eight countries across europe. In all countries studied, birth risks within cohabitation demonstrated a negative educational gradient. When directly comparing cohabiting fertility with marital fertility, the negative educational gradient persists in all countries except Italy, although differences were not significant in Austria, France, and West Germany. To explain these findings, we present an alternative explanation for the increase in childbearing within cohabitation that goes beyond the explanation of the Second Demographic Transition and provides a new interpretation of the underlying mechanisms that may influence childbearing within cohabitation.     

Social background composition and educational growth

This paper examines the impact of intercohort changes in social background composition on changes in grade progression rates at selected schooling levels. It presents formal arguments that the relative and absolute effects of background composition on grade progression rates should decline over levels of schooling, and using data for white males born beteen 1907 and 1951, offers empirical support for these arguments. Whereas twentieth century increases in average educational attainment are primarily due to increases in grade progression rates at the elementary and secondary levels, future growth must occur through increases in transition rates beyond high school, given the near universality of high school graduation for cohorts born at midcentury. Our analysis shows that postsecondary progression rates are much less responsive to changes in family background composition than rates in the schooling process. Despite intercohort changes in background composition that are increasingly favorable to educational attainment, future educational growth may be slower than past growth because compositional effects on average attainment will be through progression rates where the effects are weak.     

Pathways to educational homogamy in marital and cohabiting unions

There is considerable disagreement about whether cohabitors are more or less likely to be educationally homogamous than married couples. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I reconcile many of the disparate findings of previous research by conducting a “stock and flow” analysis of assortative cohabitation and marriage. I find that cohabitors are less likely to be educationally homogamous than married couples overall, but these differences are not apparent when cohabiting and marital unions begin. Instead, the results suggest that differences in educational homogamy by union type are driven by selective exits from marriage and cohabitation rather than by differences in partner choice. Marriages that cross educational boundaries are particularly likely to end. The findings suggest that although cohabitors place greater emphasis on egalitarianism than married couples, this does not translate into greater educational homogamy. The findings are also consistent with a large body of research on cohabitation and divorce questioning the effectiveness of cohabitation as a trial marriage.     

Tabulated information about China's educational development

Table1GeneralsituationofvariousschoolsinChina,1996(10,000persons)Table2Generalsituationofadulteducation,1996(10,000persons)Table3GeneralsituationofgirlTable4Numberofethnicstudentsandstudentsandwomenteachersinalltypesteachersinalltypesofschools,1996ofschools,1996(10,000persons)Table5Proportionsofgraduatesenteringjuniorandseniormiddleschools,1996Table6Kindergartens,1996(10,000persons)Table7Numberofpostgraduatestudents,1996(person)Table&NumbersofgeneralmiddleschoolsandstudentsinChina'scitie…     

Changing educational inequalities in india in the context of affirmative action

Indian society suffers from substantial inequalities in education, employment, and income based on caste and ethnicity. Compensatory or positive discrimination policies reserve 15% of the seats in institutions of higher education and state and central government jobs for people of the lowest caste, the Scheduled Caste; 7.5% of the seats are reserved for the Scheduled Tribe. These programs have been strengthened by improved enforcement and increased funding in the 1990s. This positive discrimination has also generated popular backlash and on-the-ground sabotage of the programs. This paper examines the changes in educational attainment between various social groups for a period of nearly 20 years to see whether educational inequalities have declined over time. We use data from a large national sample survey of over 100,000 households for each of the four survey years--1983, 1987-1988, 1993-1994, and 1999-2000--and focus on the educational attainment of children and young adults aged 6-29. Our results show a declining gap between dalits, adivasis, and others in the odds of completing primary school. Such improvement is not seen for Muslims, a minority group that does not benefit from affirmative action. We find little improvement in inequality at the college level. Further, we do not find evidence that upper-income groups, the so-called creamy layer of dalits and adivasis, disproportionately benefit from the affirmative action programs at the expense of their lower-income counterparts.