A Canonical Correlation Analysis of Occupational Mobility Among Mexican Americans*

Studies of occupational mobility have generally ranked occupations on the basis of their socioeconomic status level or prestige component to measure movement between jobs. Two potential problems may limit the usefulness of that approach for racial and ethnic minority groups: (1) the relationship between occupation and socioeconomic status may not be the same as for the majority group, and (2) minority group members are more likely to be clustered at the low end of both socioeconomic and prestige scales. Canonical correlation analysis requires no prior ranking of occupations, so we use it to investigate intergenerational and career mobility among a sample of Mexican Americans. The findings indicate that mobility among Mexican Americans is about as frequent as among the total population, but that the pattern of movement differs considerably. As a result, the relative status of occupations among Mexican Americans has changed over time and, consequently, socioeconomic status scales developed for the total population do not provide accurate assessments of mobility for Mexican Americans. This discrepancy is less noticeable for career mobility, indicating that among the latest generation of Mexican Americans, mobility patterns are becoming more similar to those in the rest of society.     

Socioeconomic Indexes for Occupations: A Review, Update, and Critique

Following a review of the history and sources of socioeconomic indexes for occupations, we estimate a new set of indexes for 1990 Census occupation lines, based on relationships between the prestige ratings obtained by Nakao and Treas in the 1989 General Social Survey and characteristics of occupational incumbents in the 1990 Census. We also investigate theoretical and empirical relationships among socioeconomic and prestige indexes, using data from the 1994 General Social Survey. Many common occupations, especially those held by women, do not fit the typical relationships among prestige, education, and earnings. The fit between prestige and socioeconomic characteristics of occupations can be improved by statistical transformation of the variables. However, in rudimentary models of occupational stratification, prestige-validated socioeconomic indexes are of limited value. They give too much weight to occupational earnings, and they ignore intergenerational relationships between occupational education and occupational earnings. Levels of occupational education appear to define the main dimension of occupational persistence across and within generations. We conclude that composite indexes of occupational socioeconomic status are scientifically obsolete.     

Occupational Status of Rural Outmigrants and Return Migrants1

Abstract This research analyzes the occupational status payoffs to short-term outmigration and return migration for male workers in a developing country. Using an occupational status model that integrates explanations from the status attainment and migration literatures and longitudinal data from the Philippine Migration Survey, the results show that both outmigrants and return migrants have lower occupational prestige scores than nonmigrants. Regression standardization and decomposition analyses reveal that while rural outmigrants are positively selected on socioeconomic characteristics compared with nonmigrants, their lower occupational prestige scores are largely because their prior farming and fishing occupational experiences does not properly prepare them for the urban labor market Return migrants' lower occupational status scores are due to negative selection on socioeconomic characteristics.     

Dimensions of occupational inequality and Duncan's socioeconomic index

Using the original 1962 Blau and Duncan data for white males, I compare relative amounts of inequality in the distributions of occupational prestige, earnings, autonomy, and job skills. Also assessed are the degree of status rigidity (or intercorrelations) among these four dimensions of occupational inequality and the simultaneous relations among these four dimensions in a father-to-son occupational mobility model. These findings are compared to those obtained with Duncan's socioeconomic index to determine whether additional information can be obtained when using independent measures representing the multiple dimensions of occupational inequality versus using the SEI alone. Only minor discrepancies are found, and these relate to autonomy and earnings.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1985 Pacific Sociological Association meetings.     

Elite formation under occupation: the internal stratification of palestinian elites in the West Bank and Gaza Strip

This paper examines the internal stratification of Palestinian elites in the West Bank and Gaza Strip under Israeli occupation. Our general aim is to clarify the extent to which social and political subordination to outside rule influences the development of indigenous elites in stateless societies. In contrast to nation-state societies, such elites may be horizontally stratified into a wider range of institutional settings, and vertically stratified by anti-occupation activism alongside the attainment of occupational prestige. In addition, context-specific determinants of their stratification patterns, such as refugee status, regionality, and country in which educational credentials were acquired, should be considered. A secondary content analysis of interviews conducted by the Palestinian Panorama centre with 249 elite members reveals, that the vertical stratification of Palestinian elites along occupational attainment and anti-occupation activism constitutes two quite independent status dimensions. A multinomial logit regression shows that, horizontally, elite groups are embedded in four distinct types of institutional activity, further demonstrating the multi-faceted formation of Palestinian elites. Contextual resources, such as refugee versus non-refugee status, regionality, and the acquiring of Western credentials, have differential effects on the vertical and horizontal stratification of Palestinian elites. The implications of these findings for further research on elite formation in the post-Oslo Palestinian society and in other stateless societies are discussed in conclusion.     

A comparison of the allocation of male and female occupational prestige*

Ce travail cherche à répondre à deux questions: de quel façon le sexe d'un ouvrier influence l'évaluation du prestige professionnel, et quelle est la relation existant entre la composition des sexes par rapport aux occupations, et l'évaluation du prestige professionnel lorsque le sexe des ouvriers est pris en considération. Trois échelles du prestige professionnel (traditionnelle, masculine, féminine) sont créées. Les résultats indiquent des différences dans l'ordre hiérarchique et les niveaux moyens du prestige professionnel masculin et féminin. De plus, la composition par sexe des occupations influence le statut social des occupations de deux façons différentes. This paper is concerned with two questions: how does the sex of the worker influence the evaluation of occupational prestige, and what is the relationship between the sex composition of occupations and the evaluation of occupational prestige when the sex of the worker is taken into consideration? Three occupational prestige scales (traditional, male, and female) are created. The results show differences in both the rank order and mean levels of male and female occupational prestige. In addition the sex composition of occupations is shown to influence the social standing of occupations in two separate ways.     

SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS AND RACIAL GROUP INTERESTS AMONG BLACK AMERICANS

ABSTRACT

This study assesses predictions from the dominant ideology thesis and theory of group interest concerning the relationship between socioeconomic status and racial solidarity across three domains of racial ideology. Findings from a local area sample (N = 184) in Cleveland, Ohio, provide considerable support for the theory of group interest. Racial solidarity indicators, such as the perception of discrimination, transcend individual socioeconomic status in constructing a group-based racial viewpoint. Conversely, traditional measures of class position, such as income and education, fail to induce attitudinal variation across the analyzed domains, namely causal attributions, racial politics, and attitudes toward interracial intimacy. In fact, the subjective social class measure, occupational prestige, tends to promote differences favorable to racial solidarity. These findings undermine the long-established conclusion that increased socioeconomic status exerts a conservatizing influence over racially/ethnically-specific attitudes. The implications shed light on the extent to which racial worldviews exist and directions for future research are mentioned.     

Can digital skills raise occupational prestige among ethnic minorities?

Using data from a large-scale Annual Social Survey of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, we investigate the correlation between digital skills and occupational prestige among veteran Jews and two minority groups, namely Arabs and immigrants to Israel from the Former Soviet Union (FSU). Our findings show that both minority groups have significant disadvantages in occupational prestige compared to veteran Jews. Although causation cannot be inferred because of the correlational design of our study, digital skills were found to contribute to occupational prestige among veteran Jews and FSU immigrants, beyond the classic socio-demographic factors. The occupational prestige gap between veteran Jews and FSU immigrants was eliminated after controlling for socio-demographic variables and before taking digital skills into consideration. The effect of digital skills on occupational prestige among Arabs was insignificant and after controlling for socio-demographic and digital skills, the gap in occupational prestige between veteran Jews and Arabs remained significant.     

The 1981 socioeconomic index for occupations in Canada

Nous présentons ici un nouvel index socio-économique des occupations, basé sur le recensement de 1981. Il est généralement admis que l'occupation est le meilleur indicateur de statut socio-économique, mais l'importance accordée au prestige, au revenu et à léducation dans la hiérarchisation des occupations demeure matière à débats. Pour cet index, nous avons décidé d'accorder un poids égal aux niveaux d'éducation et de revenu, en rant que composantes additives du statut socio-économique. Aussi, pour fins de continuité, nous avons calibré l 'index sur la base de l échelle Pineo-Porter de prestige.
This article presents a socioeconomic index for the total Canadian labour force, based on 1981 Census data. It also reviews the problems and criticisms of indexes of this kind, and attempts to specify the meaning of socioeconomic scales and the uses to which they may be legitimately put. The present index is most applicable in situations where access to data is limited to occupational titles and where one desires a unidimensional contextual indicator which locates individuals in the Canadian occupational structure at a given point in time. Sociological analysis of structured inequality, however, may be advanced most effectively if, where feasible, a full range of methodological options is considered, including the assessment of conditions on the level of the individual, the use of other contextual levels such as the workplace, and the investigation of occupation, gender and class as interdependent historical products.     

Occupational status attainments of university graduates: individual attributes and labour market effects compared

Ce document analyse le processus de realisation d'un statut professionnel pour cinq cohortes de diplômés d'université, hommes et femmes, durant la période s'étendant de 1960 à 1976. Après avoir reçu leurs diplômés, les hommes, comparés à leurs homologues féminins, sont parvenus, en general, à un statut professionnel plus élevé, réparti sur une échelle plus large. Les conséquences des differences socio-économiques sur la réalisation d'un statut professionnel se sont avèrées minimes ou insignifiantes pour les deux sexes. Les effets des différences de l'enseignement reçu sur le statut professionnel sont plus grands. Les rendements pour l'étudiant avec une moyenne académique élevée sont les mêmes pour les hommes que pour les femmes. Les hommes qui ont poursuivi de hautes études supérieures ont éprouvé un meilleur rendement de méme que les femmes qui se sont spécialisées en sciences. La condition du marché du travail au moment ou ces étudiants ont obtenu leurs diplômes s'est avérée le facteur le plus déterminant dans la réalisation d'un statut professionnel. L'on maintient que la recherche sur la réalisation d'un statut professionnel a largement négligé les facteurs structurels tels que les conséquences du marché du travail, et sa concentration sur le prestige professionnel a entretenu le déguisement des differences entre les sexes dans la réalisation d'un statut professionnel. This paper analyzes the occupational status attainment process for five cohorts of male and female university graduates spanning the time period 1960 to 1976. When compared to their female counterparts, males on the whole achieve higher occupational status after graduation and experience a wider distribution of status. The effect of socioeconomic variables on occupational attainment are found to be either small or insignificant for both sexes. The effects of educational variables on occupational attainment are greater. The returns to a high undergraduate academic average are similar for males and females; males experience a higher return to graduate study while females experience a larger return to majoring in science. The state of the labour market at time of graduation is found to have the largest effect on occupational status attainment. It is argued that occupational status attainment research has largely neglected such structural factors as labour market effects, and its focus on occupational prestige has tended to mask sex differences in occupational status attainment.     

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Work satisfaction, self‐esteem, and alienation measures were obtained from white males in three service occupations (bartenders, barbers, and mailmen) at different levels of the occupational prestige hierarchy. While we found an overall positive relationship between work satisfaction and occupational prestige, this only held for variables where societal reference groups were forced upon the respondents. Such findings suggest that the relationship between work satisfaction and occupational prestige is less absolute than usually suggested by the literature. Hypotheses from the literature arguing for a direct relationship between occupational prestige and alienation were not supported by our data. We conclude that sociologists probably overestimate the salience of work and occupational prestige for the working class.     

Socioeconomic Deprivation and Religious Salience: A Cognitive Behavioral Approach

Past research is consistent with the idea that socioeconomic deprivation leads individuals to be more religious in certain ways. The related perspectives of exchange theory and cognitive behaviorism imply that such deprivation also leads people to place more importance on religion a virtually unexplored issue. This study examines the effects of education, occupational prestige and income on religious salience" among residents of the Raleigh, North Carolina, metropolitan area Oc cupational prestige and among respondents who were not church members education are found to have the hypothesized negative effects on salience. However, income has no effects when education and occupation are controlled, and an argument by Rodney Stark that these effects would hold true only for church members is contradicted.     

Racial boundary formation at the dawn of Jim Crow: the determinants and effects of black/mulatto occupational differences in the United States, 1880

This article examines variation in the social position of mixed-race populations by exploiting county-level variation in the degree of occupational differentiation between blacks and mulattoes in the 1880 U.S. census. The role of the mixed-race category as either a "buffer class" or a status threat depended on the class composition of whites. Black/mulatto occupational differentiation was greatest where whites had high occupational prestige and thus little to fear from a mulatto group. Furthermore, differentiation increased the risk of lynching where whites had relatively low status and decreased the risk of lynching where whites had relatively high status.     

Gender, social status, and emotional reliance

Past research has suggested the potential importance of considering emotional reliance, a dimension of interpersonal dependence, when addressing social and developmental risk factors for depression. Based on a probability sample of 1,393 adults aged 18-55 residing in Toronto, Canada, this paper addresses gender differences in emotional reliance and the relevance of emotional reliance in explaining the gender-depression association. We also explore link-ages between emotional reliance and status factors. Findings indicate that emotional reliance is significantly related to depression and that women report greater reliance than men, independent of social status factors like marital and parental status, education, income, and occupational prestige. Moreover, the positive association between emotional reliance and depression is greater for women. Several social status factors modify the relationship between gender and emotional reliance. Both education and occupational prestige reduce reliance, and are particularly beneficial in this regard for women. Marriage, on the other hand, increases emotional reliance, especially for men. We offer interpretations of this pattern of findings.     

THE MEANING OF OCCUPATIONAL PRESTIGE SCORES:

This research reexamines the meaning of occupational prestige scores from the social psychological perspective of identity theory. Using comparable data for Canada and the United States, it analyzes the degree to which the education and income levels of occupations influence occupational prestige judgements by evoking affective associations (feelings about the goodness, powerfulness, and liveliness of occupational identities), as well as the extent to which these social sentiments are independent determinants of prestige. There has been a longstanding controversy about the normative content of occupational prestige scores. We find that moral worthiness (as measured by the Evaluation dimension of the semantic differential) is a determinant of the prestige of occupations with low and middle but not high levels of education and income. We also find that the impact of education on prestige scores is direct and cognitive, while a considerable proportion of the total effect of income is processed through feelings about the potency of occupations. The results for the two countries are very similar. One exception is that moral worthiness is a more important determinant of prestige in the United States than in Canada. We connect this finding to the literature comparing value differences between the two countries.     

Normative Embourgeoisement among Manual Workers: a Reexamination Using Longitudinal Data*

This research examines the validity of the normative embourgeoisement perspective—the familiar notion that manual workers are becoming middle class in their cognitive orientations. Data are used from ten national surveys between 1956 and 1976 to examine changes in middle class identification among manual and nonmanual workers. Contrary to some earlier research which examined only two time periods, the results indicate that middle class identification among manual workers has increased over time at a faster rate than among nonmanual workers. Thus, there is greater similarity between manuals and nonmanuals in their middle class identification. Contrary to the arguments of normative embourgeoisement, however, the socioeconomic status (i.e., education, income, and occupational prestige) gains of manuals relative to nonmanuals do not account for this increased similarity. The research shows the need to apply longitudinal tests to dynamic theoretical perspectives, and the potential problems involved in such tests when only two periods are examined.     

Testing the modernization hypothesis and the socialist ideology hypothesis: a comparative sibling analysis of educational attainment and occupational status

In this study, we present a comparative sibling analysis. This enables us to test two major social mobility hypotheses, i.e. the modernization hypothesis and the socialist ideology hypothesis. We employ survey data on brothers in England, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, Spain, and the USA, covering a historical period from 1916 till 1990. Results show that the effects of parental social class on educational attainment are smaller in technologically advanced societies, and that the effects of parental social class on occupational status are smaller in social-democratic and communist societies. In addition, the total family impact on occupational status declines with modernization. But overall, we observe that the family of origin has not lost its importance for its sons' educational attainment and occupational status yet.     

权力还是声望?——社会资本测量的争论与验证

在个体社会资本的研究中,定位法已成为国际上普遍接受的一种测量方法。该方法的核心特征是使用职业声望分数来计算个体社会网络中所蕴含的资源,其理论基础是声望的功能主义解释,即社会分工导致职业权力分化,由此导致了不同的职业声望。本研究从声望的社会承认逻辑出发,论述了社会分层中声望与权力的不一致性,并由此提出计算个体社会资本时,应测量网络中的权力资源而非声望资源。本研究基于北京、郑州和昆明三城市居民的问卷调查的数据,重新编制了职业权力分数,并将其与职业声望分数进行比较。结果发现职业权力与职业声望之间存在显著差异,而且基于职业权力计算出来的社会资本无论在信度和效度方面都优于基于职业声望测算的结果。本研究的结果,对于中国社会资本的研究和社会分层研究均有一定启示。     

From childhood to young adulthood: the importance of self-esteem during childhood for occupational achievements among young men and women

This study investigates the impact of self-esteem during childhood on men’s and women’s occupational prestige in young adulthood. By combining first-hand information from parents in the Swedish Level-of-Living surveys (LNU) 2000 and their children in the Child-LNU in 2000 and the follow-up study in LNU-2010, we are able to assess how self-esteem during adolescence is related to occupational prestige in adulthood. Multivariate analyses were used to determine whether associations between self-esteem (global and domain-specific) in childhood (aged 10–18 years) and occupational prestige in young adulthood (aged 20–28) exist and, if so, what the magnitudes of these associations are for each respective gender.

For women, there is a positive association between confidence in mathematics and prestige, even when accounting for actual math grades. Global self-esteem is positively related to later occupational prestige as well. For men, self-esteem is unrelated to occupational prestige. Only actual performance in mathematics is important for men’s occupational achievements.

These results indicate the importance of taking gender differences into account when investigating how self-esteem is related to outcomes in young adulthood. A possible implication is the importance of focusing on the development of self-esteem among children, particularly girls, in school.     

Gender and Achievement: The Early Careers of College Graduates

Abstract

NORC longitudinal data on a national sample of 1961 college graduates are analyzed to determine gender main and interaction effects in a model of educational, occupational and income achievement among employed graduates. The results indicate that (1) there is a direct female disadvantage in educational and income achievement but gender comparability in occupational prestige; (2) in general, grades are no more important than gender of student as a determinant of achievement; and (3) for men more than women; high freshman prestige expectations result in high undergraduate grades; high grades translate into high senior prestige expectations; and graduate school enrollment results in degree attainment.