Sex and marriage of raters in the evaluation of occupations

The evaluation of occupational prestige ratings obtained from different subgroups within the same society has been shown to be remarkably similar (Reiss, A. J., Jr., Duncan, O. D., Hah, P. K., and North, C. C., 1961, Occupations and Social Status, Free Press, New York; Svalastoga, K., 1959, Prestige, Class, and Mobility, Gyldendal, Copenhagen; Tiryakian, E. A., 1958, American Journal of Sociology 63 (January), 390–399). Our purpose is to explore how the gender and marital status of raters influence the evaluation of occupational prestige. Using more detailed data than heretofore available, we will reexamine the similarity between occupational prestige evaluations observed among female and male respondents. Models of the way in which characteristics of occupational incumbents, such as income and education, are constructed to explore possible differences in the ways in which male and female raters evaluate occupations. The results of this analysis by gender of rater will then be used to examine both the gender and marital status of raters.     

Problems of concept and measurement in the comparative study of occupational mobility

This paper argues that, despite a great deal of research on the topic, we have almost no firm knowledge about societal differences in the rates, patterns, and processes of occupational mobility. Insufficient attention has been paid by previous researchers to the problem of standardizing the measurement of occupational status. As a result, the paper demonstrates, existing cross-national comparisons of mobility are virtually invalid. A Standard International Occupational Prestige Scale developed by the author is proposed as a basis for valid cross-national comparison. Properties of the scale are discussed and results achieved with the scale are compared to those based on other occupational scaling procedures.     

Scaling the prestige,authority, and income potential of college curricula

This paper develops the concept of “targeted education,” a theoretical ranking of college curricula, into a multidimensional framework. The new scales, based on the traditional stratification dimensions, prestige, authority, and income, are then used in a study of sex differences in the process of occupational achievement among men and women with college degrees. The targeted education scales predict occupational prestige and wages 7 years after the college degree, and they point out interesting differences between male and female attainment processes. In general, targeted education has a greater quantitative impact for men's occupational outcomes than for women's prestige and income, but results also suggest significant qualitative differences between men and women. A large proportion of women target their education toward, and end up in, an under-employed labor pool for the primary and secondary school system.     

A revised socioeconomic index of occupational status

Duncan's Socioeconomic Index (SEI), a widely used indicator of occupational ranking, is based on education and income data from the 1950 census. The major purpose of this paper is to offer a more contemporary version of this index. There are several reasons for doing so. Not only has the occupational classificatory scheme been altered, but the educational and economic characteristics of the American labor force and of specific occupational groups have changed since 1950. The two decades may also have seen a shift in the relations between the educational and economic attributes of an occupational grouping and its social standing or prestige. Second, the construction of the original SEI rested on the characteristics of the male labor force, rather than those of the total labor force. Third, in the process of updating the index, we illustrate how certain arbitrary decisions (dictated by data limitations) in the construction of the Duncan SEI served to vest the socioeconomic index with some artifactual properties. In the production of an updated version of the socioeconomic index, we use three approaches. First, we experiment with differing measures of the income and educational criteria. Second, we reconstruct the dependent variable, occupational standing, to provide a better approximation of the prestige measure used by Duncan (1961). Third, we consider the attributes of both the male and total labor forces in generating contemporary indexes of occupational status. We also compare the performance of the new socioeconomic indexes in models of occupational attainment against the performance of the original Duncan index and subsequent occupational prestige measures. The paper appends new socioeconomic indexes for detailed occupational titles based on the 1970 census classification of occupations.     

Reevaluating the uses of status: The case of earnings determination

Status and prestige variables and measures have been central to the sociological study of individual variations in income and other dependent variables for at least 2 decades. Yet theoretical and methodological rationales for the use of such variables in the explanation of income are problematic. This conclusion, along with some similar conclusions about other uses of status and prestige variables and measures, were reached after a review of Weberian, functionalist, and other prominent discussions of the uses of status/prestige in theory and research on income. It is suggested that an emphasis upon structural attributes of jobs is more promising than a continued emphasis upon evaluatory, status/prestige conceptions of jobs for effective theorizing about income determination. A quantitative analysis of earnings shows that income effects of a common measure of socio-economic status disappear in the context of a rudimentary structural model of income. It is concluded that social scientists should move on to use more varied attributes of jobs and exercise more caution in the use of status and prestige variables.     

Measures of occupational status in a special population

Previous research has shown that indirect measures of occupational status such as the Duncan Socioeconomic Index (SEI) are more valid than direct measures of occupational prestige, such as those developed by the National Opinion Research Center and by Treiman, for analyses of social mobility. The Professional, Technical, and Kindred (PTK) occupations available for the SEI are a biased sample of all PTK occupations. Do findings on the validity of the SEI pertaining to the general population hold for special populations, such as college graduates? Confirmatory factor analysis comparing the validities of four measures of occupational SES—the SEI, a 1960 counterpart of the SEI developed by Siegel and based on all Census occupations, the NORC prestige scale, and the Treiman international prestige scale—showed that the indirect measure developed by Siegel was clearly more valid than the other three measures. Since these findings indicate that the predictors in a regression equation are more valid than the criterion, there is some question as to what the criterion should really be.     

Do females necessarily have the same occupational status scores as males? A conceptual and empirical examination of the Duncan Socioeconomic Status Index and Nam-Powers Occupational Status Scores

Social Science researchers have advanced important yet somewhat contradictory conclusions regarding the different economic and occupational reward structures faced by men and women. Income and wage differences between men and women have been shown to be sizable and persistent throughout the occupational hierarchy. Conversely, gender differences in occupational status, commonly scaled by the Duncan Socioeconomic Index, have been shown to be small or nonexistent in most studies. In an attempt to investigate this incongruity, the present study undertakes a comparison of the Duncan SEI and the Nam-Powers Occupational Status Scores in an empirical study of the occupational position of white men and women in 65 large standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSAs) in 1970. While the findings of earlier studies showing no gender differences in occupational status are for the most part replicated using the Duncan SEI, use of the Nam-Powers scores prompts a much different conclusion. Large status differences between men and women are indicated using this latter scale, differences which are very much in line with income differences commonly cited. We suggest that the Nam-Powers metric should be used instead of the Duncan SEI in studies of occupational status of women and men.     

Assumptions of social mobility research in the U.S.: The case of occupational status

This paper examines the theoretical and empirical basis for common rank-orderings of occupational roles by raters throughout the world. From an illustrative comparison of occupational stratification in Australia and the United States we conclude tentatively that (1) commonalities in the socioeconomic characteristics of occupational roles provide the basis for interplace consistencies in “prestige” scores, (2) the structure of occupational mobility in the U.S. and Australia is largely similar, (3) this similar structure of occupational stratification manifests a common socioeconomic process which defines a (the?) major component of occupational mobility in capitalist, industrial (only?) societies. We infer that “prestige” scores for occupations are fallible estimates of the socioeconomic statuses of occupation, within the context of mobility processes in (at least) the U.S. and Australia.     

Marshall and Gorman's Markov chain model for occupational prestige

This report scrutinizes the Markov chain model for occupational prestige proposed by K. P. Marshall and B. L. Gorman (1975, Social Science Research 4, 41–64). It is shown that the results of their application are highly unstable.     

Sex stratification in the workplace: Male-female differences in economic returns to occupation

Employing data from the 1974–1977 NORC General Social Surveys, I investigate differences in the earnings attainment of currently employed white men and women age 25 to 64. I focus special attention on the explanatory effects of job characteristics other than those traditionally employed in prestige and status-defined earnings models. The results, based on a multivariate regression analysis and a regression standardization procedure, suggest that a nontrivial portion of the earnings gap between men and women is due to women's concentration in jobs which are low-paying and heavily female and because women are less likely than men to exercise authority in their jobs or to control the means of production. Including these factors in an earnings model statistically increases women's earnings as a percentage of men's by over 7%, accounting for approximately 13% of the earnings gap. Net of these job characteristics, gender differences in industry distribution are not substantively important in explaining why women earn less than men, accounting for only 0.4% of the earnings gap. When single women's earnings are adjusted to take account of their occupational concentration, 10% of the male-single female earnings gap is explained, providing preliminary evidence that the job characteristics I specify are not mere proxies for work experience. Including job characteristics as measures of the context of employment thus usefully extends the human capital and prestige or statusdefined models traditionally employed in explanations of the male-female earnings differential.     

Unemployment and men's entrance into female-dominated jobs

Despite the contraction of many male-dominated occupations, men have made limited progress in entering female-dominated jobs. Using monthly employment histories from the SIPP, we examine whether individual economic conditions—such as a period of unemployment—are associated with men subsequently pursuing female-dominated work. Specifically, we ask whether men are more likely to enter female-dominated jobs after unemployment, compared to men who take a new job directly from employment. We find that unemployment significantly increases the odds of men entering female-dominated work among men who make job transitions. By examining changes in occupational prestige as well as wage differences before and after unemployment, we also find that entering a female-dominated job (compared to other job types) may help men mitigate common scarring effects of unemployment such as wage losses and occupational prestige downgrades. Accordingly, this study reveals a critical occupational route that may allow men to remain upwardly mobile after involuntary unemployment.     

‘What about the couple?’ Interracial marriage and psychological distress

We explore the association between racial composition of couples—that is, whether they are interracial or homogamous—and the psychological distress of their members, as measured in a screening scale for non-specific psychological distress. We use a pooled 1997–2001 National Health Interview Survey sample of the married and cohabiting population of the United States. We compare the odds of distress for interracial vs. same race married/cohabiting adults. There are several key findings. Interracial marriage is associated with increases in severe distress for Native American men, white women, and for Hispanic men and women married to non-white spouses, compared to endogamous members of the same groups. Higher rates of distress are observed for intermarried persons with African American or Native American husbands or wives, and for women with Hispanic husbands. Lower socioeconomic status explains approximately half of the increased distress experienced by white women, while higher socioeconomic status partially suppresses increases in distress for Hispanic men and women.     

Occupational prestige from preference orientations via the Markov Chain: An alternative to respondent ranking techniques

This paper suggests a method of determining occupational prestige structures through simulation of transfer of credit processes involving the Markov Chain. The method required recording present and preferred occupations of a representative sample of employed persons. Following the example of Blau (1956) and Empey (1956) the concept “preferred occupation” is suggested as clearly distinct from occupational choice which has been treated by other researchers (Musgrave 1967; Carol and Parry 1968; Kuvlesky and Bealer 1966; Haller and Sewell 1967; Solcum 1956; and Philband and Gregory 1956). A series of Markov Chain interactions transforms the present-preferred occupation matrix, “controls” for structure limitations on ambitions and social distance, and generates a hierarchical model of occupational prestige structures. This paper examines the methodological and theoretical issues implicit in the measurement of prestige and the establishment of prestige hierarchies, and describes the procedures of the application of the Markov Chain to occupational preference responses. It reports the results of the application of this technique to a pilot sample and compares the resulting hierarchy with those derived from NORC measures and the Duncan socioeconomic index.     

Some cross-population comparisons of family bias in the effects of schooling on occupational status

It is a truism of research on social stratification that the effects of socioeconomic or family background on educational attainment and adult success lead to biases in the simple regressions of occupational status (or other putative outcomes of schooling) on educational attainment. The present analysis compares findings of family bias in the effects of schooling on occupational status across samples of siblings drawn from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study and from Olneck's sample of brothers from Kalamazoo, Michigan. The comparative analysis shows that family bias in the effect of schooling on occupational status may be much less than is commonly believed and that very large samples may be needed to measure it reliably. Moreover, the analysis suggests that estimates of family bias are very sensitive to the specification of response variability in schooling. The analysis also illustrates some useful methods for cross-population comparison of structural equation models.     

Socioeconomic indexes and the new 1980 census occupational classification scheme

Because of their usefulness in a wide variety of research, socioeconomic scores have been revised several times to incorporate changes in the relevant components of the occupational structure and to conform with the changing census occupational classification schemes. The major purpose of this paper is to provide socioeconomic scores for the 1980 census occupational classification scheme. First, however, we review earlier versions of the socioeconomic index (SEI), summarize the relevant disparities between the 1970 and 1980 census occupational classificatory schemes, and then explain in detail the procedures used to reconcile the SEI with 1980 occupational codes. We also show that, although the 1980 occupational classificatory scheme differs radically from the 1970 occupational scheme, the socioconomic scores for 1980 occupational data replicate features found in 1970 data.     

Effects of family background on social autonomy at midlife

Social autonomy is the tendency to assert one’s opinion in the face of opposition. This paper investigates the social roots of that tendency by focusing on the long-term effects of childhood family background on midlife social autonomy. The effects of two aspects of family background are investigated—socioeconomic background and childhood household composition. Family background variables in these categories have small yet theoretically and statistically significant effects on midlife social autonomy. Parental education and occupation are associated with midlife social autonomy among both men and women. Early-life household composition variables and parental income are associated with social autonomy only among women. Adult status variables generally do not mediate the effects of of the family background variables on midlife social autonomy. This suggests that the long-term effects of family background on social autonomy are primarily due to early life socialization. Gender-specific socialization processes are discussed as explanations for these effects.     

Nonlinear models of distribution of talking in small groups

This paper develops a mathematical model of the distribution over time of talking in discussion groups. Researchers of small group processes and social inequality have long recognized that interaction in small discussion groups is usually not equally distributed and that being a person who talks more than others is associated with having higher status outside the group and greater prestige and influence within the group. There is also a history of mathematical approaches to describing this phenomenon. As an addition to this literature, here a nonlinear dynamical system model is presented and used to develop computer simulations that are compared with data from a laboratory study of real four-person discussion groups. The model is based on theoretical assumptions about group processes including individual differences in volubility, status generalization, deference hierarchies and norms of taking turns and of fairness. While none of these alone make predictions that match the data, when they are all combined simulations are produced that closely match the data in both changes over time and differentiation among members. The dynamical system using the parameters as estimated for these data reaches a fixed point, which may help understand how groups structures become stable under some conditions but not others.     

Racial double standards and applicant selection

Using double standards to judge job applicants can prevent the selection of qualified candidates who possess disadvantaged status characteristics. Experimental studies have shown that when assessors compare equally qualified women and men for jobs, the men are more likely to be recommended for hiring. We propose that the theoretical processes affecting choices by gender also will apply with candidates differentiated by race. We test that and other predictions using a modification of the application folders design used in double standards research. We found that double standards affected job recommendations and judged suitability of candidates, but not their judged competence. We believe that the process operates outside of conscious choice of candidates, and we used that insight to test an intervention to overcome using double standards in situations of race-differentiated candidates.     

Race differences in middle class lifestyle: The role of home ownership

This paper examines race differences in two aspects of “middle class” lifestyle: home ownership and net worth. Home ownership indicates stability; and for older persons net worth is an important part of economic status. Data from the NLS studies of older men are analyzed. The major findings are: (1) while whites at any earnings level are very likely to own homes by ages 50–64, only at relatively high earning levels do blacks begin to approach the home ownership rates of whites; (b) the net worth of blacks is substantially lower than that of whites after adjusting for variables in a standard status attainment model; and (c) however, among home owners the race difference as well as effects of other variables are much smaller than for renters. This is attributed to forced saving through home ownership. The paper concludes with a discussion of possible sources of low home ownership rates and low net worth of blacks and the implication of these findings for the study of middle class status.     

Do displaced workers lose occupational prestige?

Worker displacement has become a common feature of employment in the “flexible economy.” While studies of income losses and the duration of unemployment after displacement abound, and popular accounts argue that workers often lose status, less empirical attention has been paid to the quality or prestige of employment displaced workers are able to secure after a downsizing event. This paper helps to fill this gap in the literature by focusing on changes in occupational prestige among a nationally representative sample of displaced workers who became reemployed from the January 2004 Displaced Workers and Employee Tenure Supplement of the Current Population Survey. Our findings show that displaced workers with higher levels of education, net of other factors, fared significantly better than others in job quality upon reemployment, highlighting the importance of education in retaining status and privilege in the new economy.