Intergenerational effects of shifts in women’s educational distribution in South Korea: Transmission, differential fertility, and assortative mating

This study examines the intergenerational effects of changes in women’s education in South Korea. We define intergenerational effects as changes in the distribution of educational attainment in an offspring generation associated with the changes in a parental generation. Departing from the previous approach in research on social mobility that has focused on intergenerational association, we examine the changes in the distribution of educational attainment across generations. Using a simulation method based on Mare and Maralani’s recursive population renewal model, we examine how intergenerational transmission, assortative mating, and differential fertility influence intergenerational effects. The results point to the following conclusions. First, we find a positive intergenerational effect: improvement in women’s education leads to improvement in daughter’s education. Second, we find that the magnitude of intergenerational effects substantially depends on assortative marriage and differential fertility: assortative mating amplifies and differential fertility dampens the intergenerational effects. Third, intergenerational effects become bigger for the less educated and smaller for the better educated over time, which is a consequence of educational expansion. We compare our results with Mare and Maralani’s original Indonesian study to illustrate how the model of intergenerational effects works in different socioeconomic circumstances.     

Age, period, cohort and educational attainment: The importance of considering gender

Over the past century, the United States has experienced substantial population-wide gains in educational attainment - increases driven largely by processes of cohort succession. Focusing on the adult population age 25-54, we show that there has been (1) a significant attenuation of the historical increases in educational attainment, and (2) a shift in the processes underlying educational change that differs by gender. Our analysis points to a significant turning point in population-wide educational levels, and from a research perspective, has implications for how one interprets findings when using education as a control variable.     

Assessing the benefits of a rising tide: Educational attainment and increases in neighborhood socioeconomic advantage

An emerging approach to studying associations between neighborhood contexts and educational outcomes is to estimate the outcomes of adolescents growing up in neighborhoods that are experiencing economic growth in comparison to peers that reside in economically stable or declining communities. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), I examine the association between education attainment and changes in socioeconomic advantage in urban neighborhoods between 1990 and 2000. I find that residing in a neighborhood that experiences economic improvements has a positive association with educational attainment for urban adolescents. Furthermore, race-based analyses suggest consistently positive associations for all race subgroups, lending support to protective models of neighborhood effects that argue high neighborhood SES supports positive outcomes for adolescents residing in these contexts.     

Education and religion: Individual, congregational, and cross-level interaction effects on biblical literalism

Using ideas from cultural and organizational theory, I examine the interplay of individual and congregation-level educational attainment on biblical literalism. Data on 387 congregations and 100,009 worshippers (US Congregational Life Survey, 2001) are used to test hypotheses. Results indicate that the effects of congregational education and individual educational attainment are among the largest effects in models. This study is the first to show that regardless of an individual’s own education, affirmations of biblical literalism are less likely when persons with higher education dominate a congregation. This finding brings into relief the important role of social context in persons’ belief in biblical literalism. Additionally, congregational education amplifies the influence of individual education on biblical literalism such that the gap in belief between college/non-college education individuals widens in high education congregations. This finding suggests that high education persons more deeply absorb the influence of a more educated congregational context.     

Race and Wealth Inequality: The Impact of Racial Differences in Asset Ownership on the Distribution of Household Wealth

What accounts for persistent racial differences in wealth ownership? Previous research has debated the role that differences in asset ownership play in creating and maintaining wealth inequality. I use survey data to model the ownership of seven assets and find that whites are indeed more likely than blacks to buy high-risk, high-return assets. I then use a simulation model to explore the effect that these differences have on the distribution of wealth. I separate the effects of asset ownership from the effects of racial differences in family wealth history, earnings, education, marital behavior, fertility, and other influences on wealth inequality. I find that removing racial differences in asset ownership reduced wealth inequality drastically, but not completely, and that racial differences in educational attainment account for much of the remaining difference. I estimate how changes in historical patterns of portfolio behavior and educational attainment would have reduced inequality, and I explore the implications of these findings for reducing wealth inequality in the future.     

Incomplete equalization: The effect of tracking in secondary education on educational inequality

This paper tests whether the existence of vocationally oriented tracks within a traditionally academically oriented upper education system reduces socioeconomic inequalities in educational attainment. Based on a statistical model of educational transitions and data on two entire cohorts of Danish youth, we find that (1) the vocationally oriented tracks are less socially selective than the traditional academic track; (2) attending the vocationally oriented tracks has a negative effect on the likelihood of enrolling in higher education; and (3) in the aggregate the vocationally oriented tracks improve access to lower-tier higher education for low-SES students. These findings point to an interesting paradox in that tracking has adverse effects at the micro-level but equalizes educational opportunities at the macro-level. We also discuss whether similar mechanisms might exist in other educational systems.     

Self-esteem and self-efficacy in the status attainment process and the multigenerational transmission of advantage

Despite considerable evidence of the importance of self-esteem and self-efficacy for agentic, goal-oriented behavior, little attention has been directed to these psychological dimensions in the status attainment literature. The present research uses data from the longitudinal, three-generation Youth Development Study (N = 422 three-generation triads) to examine the extent to which adolescent self-esteem and economic self-efficacy affect adult educational and income attainment, and whether these psychological resources are transmitted from one generation to the next, accumulating advantage across generations. We present evidence indicating that both self-esteem and economic self-efficacy are implicated in the attainment process. Adolescent economic self-efficacy had a direct positive effect on adult educational attainment and an indirect effect through educational plans. The influence of self-esteem on adult educational attainment was entirely indirect, through school achievement. We also find evidence that economic self-efficacy was transmitted from parents to children. We conclude that future research should more broadly consider psychological resources in attainment processes from a longitudinal multigenerational perspective.     

How Does Size of Sibship Matter? Family Configuration and Family Effects on Educational Attainment

Using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study for full sibships of sizes two to five, we estimate models of the effects of social background, size of sibship, and gender on sibling resemblance in educational attainment. We find no differences in educational attainment by gender composition within those family sizes. Smaller sibships obtain more schooling, and men obtain more schooling than women. Smaller families are more heterogeneous than larger families, but the effects of measured social background characteristics do not vary by size of sibship or gender composition of sibship. The effects of social background variables on the schooling of women are uniformly smaller than among men, and the nonshared (within-family) variations in schooling are much smaller among women than among men. These findings could lead to incorrect inferences that families matter more for women than for men or that large families experience more varied outcomes than small families.     

Education and risky sex in Africa: Unraveling the link between women’s education and reproductive health behaviors in Kenya

Much research attention has been devoted to understanding the relationship between education and riskier sex-related behaviors and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. While in the early 1990s researchers found that increases in education were associated with a higher incidence of HIV/AIDS, this relationship appears to have reversed and better educated people, especially women, appear less likely to engage in riskier sex-related behaviors and have a lower incidence rate of HIV/AIDS. Our study begins to unravel the mechanisms that could explain why women’s educational attainment is associated with safer sex-related behaviors in sub-Saharan Africa. Using data from the 2003 Kenyan Demographic and Health Survey, we examine the potential mediating effects of HIV/AIDS knowledge, family planning discussions, gender empowerment, and husband’s education for explaining the relationship between education and age of first sex, casual sex, multiple sex partners, and condom use. We find that gender empowerment partially explains the relationship between education and age of first sex, and HIV/AIDS knowledge, husband’s education, and family planning discussions partially explain the relationship between education and condom use. We argue that gender inequality and lack of knowledge are likely to play a greater role in explaining the relationship between woman’s education and sex-related behaviors in sub-Saharan Africa than they do in more industrialized nations, where social capital explanations may have more explanatory power.     

How (not) to make women work?

Women in developed economies have experienced an unparalleled increase in employment rates, to the point that the gap with respect to men was cut in half. This positive trend has often been attributed to changes in the opportunity costs of working (e.g. access to caring facilities) and the opportunity costs of not-working (notably, relative growth in wages in positions more frequently occupied by women, improved educational attainment). Meanwhile, the gender employment gaps were stagnant in transition economies. Admittedly, employment equality among genders was initially much higher in transition countries.We exploit this unique evidence from transition and advanced countries, to analyze the relationship between the institutional environment and the (adjusted) gender employment gaps. We estimate comparable gender employment gaps on nearly 1500 micro databases from over 40 countries. Changes in both types of the opportunity costs exhibited strong correlation with gender employment equality where the gap was larger, i.e. advanced economies. We provide some evidence that these results are not explained away by transition-related phenomena. We argue that the observed divergence in time trends reflects a level effect: the lower the gender employment gap, the lower the strength of the relationship between gender employment equality and the opportunity costs of working. An implication from our study is that the existing instruments might be insufficient to further reduce the gender employment gap.     

Mexican parent's undocumented status and the educational attainment of the children left behind

Research shows that having undocumented parents lowers the educational attainment of children that grew up in the United States, but we know less about how it affects the education of children left behind in their origin countries. We use fixed effects models and data from the Mexican Migration Project to examine this relationship. We find that having both parents documented increases the educational attainment of children left behind by over two years in comparison to similar children with mixed-status, undocumented, and nonimmigrant parents. The effect is especially robust for boys that migrate as teenagers. These findings reveal that US immigration laws that define most Mexican immigrants as undocumented have had a devastating effect on the education of Mexican children left behind.     

A tale half told: State exclusionary and inclusionary regimes,incarceration of fathers,and the educational attainment of children

Paternal incarceration leads to educational disparities among children who are innocent of their fathers’ crimes. The scale and concentration of mass paternal incarceration thus harms millions of innocent American children. Current individuallevel analyses neglect the contribution of macro-level variation in responses of punitive state regimes to this social problem. We hypothesize that state as well as individual level investment in exclusionary paternal incarceration diminishes the educational attainment of children, although state inclusionary investment in welfare and education can offset some – and could potentially offset more - of this harm. Understanding intergenerational educational attainment therefore requires individual- and contextuallevel analyses. We use Hierarchical Generalized Linear Models to analyze the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent to Adult Health. Disparities in postsecondary educational outcomes are especially detrimental for children of incarcerated fathers located in state regimes with high levels of paternal incarceration and concentrated disadvantage. This has important implications for intergenerational occupational and status attainment.     

The social and genetic inheritance of educational attainment: Genes,parental education,and educational expansion

Recently, several genome-wide association studies of educational attainment have found education-related genetic variants and enabled the integration of human inheritance into social research. This study incorporates the newest education polygenic score (Lee et al., 2018) into sociological research, and tests three gene-environment interaction hypotheses on status attainment. Using the Health and Retirement Study (N = 7599), I report three findings. First, a standard deviation increase in the education polygenic score is associated with a 58% increase in the likelihood of advancing to the next level of education, while a standard deviation increase in parental education results in a 53% increase. Second, supporting the Saunders hypothesis, the genetic effect becomes 11% smaller when parental education is one standard deviation higher, indicating that highly educated parents are more able to preserve their family's elite status in the next generation. Finally, the genetic effect is slightly greater for the younger cohort (1942–59) than the older cohort (1920–41). The findings strengthen the existing literature on the social influences in helping children achieve their innate talents.     

The declining influence of family background on educational attainment in Australia: The role of measured and unmeasured influences

The paper examines changes in the influence of family background, including socioeconomic and social background variables on educational attainment in Australia for cohorts born between 1890 and 1982. We test hypotheses from modernization theory on sibling data using random effects models and find: (i) substantial declines in the influence of family background on educational attainment (indicated by the sibling intraclass correlations); (ii) declines in the effects of both economic and cultural socioeconomic background variables; (iii) changes in the effects of some social background variables (e.g., family size); (iv) and declines in the extent that socioeconomic and social background factors account for variation in educational attainment. Unmeasured family background factors are more important, and proportionally increasingly so, for educational attainment than the measured socioeconomic and social background factors analyzed. Fixed effects models showed steeper declines in the effects of socioeconomic background variables than in standard analyses suggesting that unmeasured family factors associated with socioeconomic background obscure the full extent of the decline.     

Skill and education effects on earnings in 18 Countries: The role of national educational institutions

This study investigates whether the mechanisms why education is rewarded vary across countries. Do educational institutions affect the likelihood that support for a particular mechanism is found? Combining IALS survey data and OECD statistics on educational institutions, it was shown that the effect of measured skill on earnings - controlled for educational attainment - is lower in countries where educational institutions produce skills relevant for work through the vocational system. This indicates that the human capital perspective on education works particularly well in vocationally oriented educational systems, as the skills generated in education are strongly overlapping with the skills that are rewarded. An alternative mechanism sees education as a means for social closure through credentialization. Under the credentialization model, education is not primarily rewarded for the productivity-enhancing skills it entails, but rather for reasons unrelated to productivity. Following this theory education is used for selection into the organization, after which directly observable skills are determining wages. Assuming that a strongly differentiated educational system creates boundaries between social groups, it is hypothesized that strongly differentiated systems lead to stronger measured skill effects. We do not find support for this hypothesis.     

Should Mom go back to school? Post-natal educational attainment and parenting practices

Although the relationship between educational attainment and parenting practices is well documented, it is typically examined at only one point in time. What happens if mothers acquire more education after the birth of their children: do they alter their parenting practices? Panel data models based on longitudinal data from ECLS-K indicate that changes in mother’s educational attainment are positively associated with increases in parental school involvement, having books in the home, and participating in non-academic family activities, but not with attitudes toward discipline. Although post-natal maternal education does not change all aspects of parenting, our findings are broadly consistent with the theory of cultural mobility and provide insights into the extent of socio-cultural mobility in contemporary American society.     

A tangled web: The reciprocal relationship between depression and educational outcomes in China

Research on depression and education usually focuses on a unidirectional relationship. This paper proposes a reciprocal relationship, simultaneously estimating the effects of depression on education and of education on depression. China, which has the world's largest education system, is used as a case study. This paper applies structural equation modeling to three datasets: the China Family Panel Studies, the China Education Panel Survey, and the Gansu Survey of Children and Families. Analyses reveal a reciprocal and negative relationship between depression and educational outcomes. Specifically, early depression reduces later educational achievement, and higher educational achievement also lowers the level of subsequent depression by resulting in less peers' unfriendliness, less pressure from parents' expectations, and less teachers' criticism. More time spent on studies is not associated with higher educational achievement but significantly increases the level of depression. Children from lower SES families bear more pressure and spend more time on studies, which does not correspond to higher educational achievement but rather to higher levels of depression. In the long term, prior depression lowers educational attainment and, after controlling for prior depression, lower educational attainment is also associated with higher levels of subsequent depression. This paper shows that the lower achievers, not the high achievers, bear the major psychological burden of the education system's quest to produce high achievement. This situation reinforces these students' educational disadvantage.     

Labor Market and Socioeconomic Effects on Marital Stability

This paper reports an investigation of the effects of socioeconomic and labor market factors on the dissolution of marriages since the mid 1960s. We examine the effects of possible sources of marital disruption, including poor labor market opportunities for young adults; the economic independence and improved labor market opportunities of women; and changes in the labor market roles and expectations of women within marriage. Using the National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Men, Young Women, and Youth, we estimate the effects on marital stability of husbands′ and wives′ levels, differences and changes in educational attainment, income, and annual weeks worked. Our results suggest that average levels of couples′ educational attainment and recent work experiences positively affect marital stability. The degree to which husbands and wives differ on educational attainment and income does not affect marital stability, but the more that wives work relative to their husbands, the greater the chances of disruption. Positive changes in wives′ socioeconomic and labor force characteristics over the course of their marriages increase the odds of marital disruption.     

Cohorts,education, and the evolution of tolerance

Normative and social structural explanations for changes in tolerance are tested using racial attitude items from 11 surveys between 1958 and 1978. Over the 20 years, while there were changes in the overall levels of racial tolerance, there were also changes in the upper and lower ends of a tolerance spectrum which differentially depended on cohort and educational effects. Regardless of the position in the tolerance spectrum, most of the change in racial attitudes resulted from across-the-board changes in all cohort and educational groups. The most racially conservative end of the spectrum was slightly eroded by increased educational attainment in the population, while the most racially liberal position was somewhat advanced by cohort replacement. In the final analysis, the normative perspective demonstrated the greater potential for applications to other, more complex, configurations of tolerance.     

构建民办高校教育教学质量管理保障体系

伴随着我国高等教育的大众化,高等教育质量保障问题日益成为人们关注和研究的焦点。民办高等教育作为我国高等教育的组成部分,教育教学质量尤其成为其赖以生存的必要条件,关系到招生和就业等一系列现实环节。本文从民办高等教育教学质量管理保障体系的内涵和构成入手．阐述当前民办高校教育教学质量的现状,指出当前民办高校教育教学质量保障的六个重点。