WHITE ENROLLMENT IN NONPUBLIC SCHOOLS, PUBLIC SCHOOL RACIAL COMPOSITION, AND STUDENT PERFORMANCE

This research note presents preliminary research into the relationship between the racial composition of public schools in school districts and the percentages of white students in nonpublic schools in those districts. Specifically, we ask two questions: Is the enrollment of whites in non‐public schools associated with minority predominance in public schools? Is there an association between the enrollment of whites outside of the public school system and the academic performance of students in the public school system? Using two‐ and three‐level hierarchical linear models, we find that school districts that have more whites in nonpublic schools tend to contain public schools with larger percentages of minority students. Further, at both the school and individual levels, achievement test scores tend to be lower in districts in which white students tend to be enrolled outside of the public school system. In addition, the achievement gap between white and minority students tends to be greater in districts with relatively more students in nonpublic schools. These findings are consistent with the argument that the withdrawal of white students from the public school system is negatively related to academic achievement because it tends to concentrate minority students in public schools.     

SEX DIFFERENCES IN SCHOOL PERFORMANCE DURING HIGH SCHOOL: Puzzling Patterns and Possible Explanations

While past explanations for sex differences in school performance are heavily geared toward explaining boys’ small advantage on standardized math tests, we broaden the focus to include educational outcomes for which girls typically do well—standardized reading tests and math and English grades. Among adolescents in the National Education Longitudinal Study, girls enjoy better English and math grades and higher reading test scores than boys in eighth grade and these advantages all increase during high school. In contrast, boys earn slightly higher math test scores in eighth grade and this gap also increases slightly by the end of high school. This set of patterns leaves us with a puzzle—why do girls and boys excel at different components of schooling? We explore models that assess the degree to which these different trajectories can be explained by sex differences in classroom behavior and out‐of‐class activities. We conclude that a major reason for sex differences in grades is boys’ poorer classroom behavior while sex differences in time spent outside of school should supplement previous explanations for test scores gaps.     

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS' EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES: THE EFFECTS OF PARTICIPATION ON ACHIEVEMENT AND TEACHERS' EVALUATIONS

ABSTRACT

I use data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study to examine both the number and the types of extracurricular activities in which elementary school students participate and find significant differences in participation patterns by gender, race, and class. The number of activities in which students participate during kindergarten and first grade affects their gains in reading achievement test scores between first and third grade and third grade teachers' evaluations of mathematics skills, but does not affect gains in math achievement test scores or teachers' evaluations of language arts skills. Dance lessons, athletic activities, and art lessons, in particular, affect one or more of the dependent variables. With one exception, interactions of extracurricular activities with socioeconomic status show that less-privileged children benefit more from participation in activities than do more-privileged children, providing evidence against Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital and social reproduction.     

HOUSEHOLD CHANGE AND RURAL SCHOOL ENROLLMENT IN MALAWI AND KENYA

This study examines school enrollment in two sub-Saharan African nations, Malawi and Kenya. The article advances a refined family economy theoretical framework for understanding variations in school enrollment. It recasts family economy frameworks to consider not only how the household institution mediates a broad social change, but also how the family institution itself may be influenced by a macroinstitutional change. The findings suggest that household structural changes, as well as changes in parents' activities and perceptions, help explain enrollment practices in rural Malawi and Kenya.     

JOB MOBILITY AND EARNINGS INSTABILITY

There is still no consensus on the causes of the increase in the variance of transitory earnings (earnings instability) in the United States. It is difficult to attribute the rise in instability to job mobility because there is no evidence of a concurrent increase in job turnover or separations. Using an error component model of the covariance structure of earnings on Panel Survey of Income Dynamics and Survey of Income and Program Participation data, this study shows that job mobility and the increase in the variance of wage changes upon job change accounts for a substantial part of the increase in earnings instability. The empirical evidence is consistent with the simulations of a search and matching model where an increase in the variance of productivity shocks increases on‐the‐job search and earnings instability among job changers while leaving job turnover approximately constant. (JEL J21, J31)     

THE EFFECTS OF FORMAL AND INFORMAL TRAINING ON TENURE AND MOBILITY IN MANUFACTURING FIRMS

This article analyzes the effects of employer investment in employees through formal and informal on-the-job training on job tenure and mobility for male and female workers, male supervisors, and male managers. Formal on-the-job training positively affects job tenure of male and female workers, firm tenure of male workers, supervisors, and managers, and mobility of male workers and managers. It negatively affects mobility of female workers. The results do not support arguments about the effects of informal on-the-job training on mobility and security, found to have a positive effect only on male managers' firm tenure.     

EXTERNAL RECRUITMENT AND INTRAFIRM MOBILITY

In Chan (1996), I suggest that a contest between internal and external candidates for a position within a firm is generally biased in favor of the former to maintain work incentive for existing workers. This implies that a successful external candidate tends to be superior in ability relative to internally promoted colleagues and therefore enjoys a higher probability of subsequent promotion. Moreover, this effect tends to diminish up the hierarchy if external competition is more of a threat at lower job levels. Analyzing personnel data from a U.S. financial corporation, I find consistent support for this hypothesis. (JEL J00 , J41 )     

HIGH SCHOOL CHOICES AND THE GENDER GAP IN STEM

Women are less likely than men to graduate with a degree in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM). We use detailed administrative data for a recent cohort of Ontario high school students, combined with data from the province's university admission system, to analyze the sources of this gap. We show that entry to STEM programs is mediated through an index of STEM readiness that depends on end‐of‐high school courses in math and science. Most of the gender gap in STEM entry can be traced to differences in the share of college entrants who are STEM‐ready; only a small share is attributable to differences in the choice of major conditional on readiness. We then use high school course data to decompose the gender gap in STEM readiness into two channels: one reflecting the gap in the fraction of high school students with the necessary prerequisites to enter STEM, the other arising from differences in the overall fractions of females and males who enter university. The gender gap in the fraction of males and females with STEM prerequisites is small. The primary driver of the gap in STEM readiness is the low rate of university entry by nonscience‐oriented males. (JEL I21, 28, I20)     

ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS AND SCHOOL SEGREGATION IN HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, FLORIDA, 1987–1999

This article draws upon the political economy and urban ecology of race perspectives to examine trends in school segregation for schools located various distances from environmental hazards. We study trends in segregation among eighty-four public grade schools between the years of 1987 and 1999 in the Hillsborough County (Florida) School District. After controlling for the percentage of students eligible for free lunch, we find that grade schools nearer to environmental hazards became disproportionately black and Hispanic while grade schools situated farther from hazards became disproportionately white. These results are consistent with a political economy of race perspective. We argue that the observed relationship between public school racial and ethnic composition and environmental hazards is likely the result of long-term historical processes that shaped geographic patterns of racial segregation.     

CHANGING ROLES OF ABILITY AND EDUCATION IN U.S. INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY

Using data on young adults from the 1979 and 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we investigate the changing roles of ability and education in the transmission of economic status across generations. We find that ability plays a substantially diminished role for the most recent cohort whereas education plays a much larger role. The first finding results primarily from a smaller effect of children's ability on status, the second from an increased correlation between parental status and educational attainment. A replication of the analysis by gender reveals that the changes in the role of ability are largely driven by men whereas the changes in education's role are largely driven by women. (JEL J62, I24)     

CORPORATE CONTROL AND PERFORMANCE IN THE 1930s

This paper tests the Berle and Means thesis that the dissemination of corporate ownership has allowed corporate managers to pursue goals other than profit maximization. Using piece-wise linear regression analysis with a sample of large U.S. corporations in the 1930s, a nonlinear relation is estimated between the degree of dominant stockholder control and corporate performance. The empirical results lend some support for the Berle and Means view of the "modern" corporation. In particular, a small degree of stockholder control is found to be associated with a low level of corporate performance, ceteris paribus.     

PREP SCHOOL AND PUBLIC SCHOOL GRADUATES: WHO ATTENDS COLLEGE REUNIONS,WHO DONATES,WHO DOESN'T,AND WHY

As early as the 1920s, studies at various elite colleges revealed that public school graduates outperformed private school graduates academically, and more recent research indicates various differences in life patterns between these two groups 25 years after graduation. The two new studies presented here, which look at attendance at college reunions and donations to one's college, extend that earlier work. At a New England college, public school graduates were more likely than the private school graduates to attend their 30th, 35th, and 40th year college reunions. Donations to the school showed that public school graduates were somewhat more likely to make contributions than private school graduates, and graduates of the most socially elite boarding schools were especially unlikely to have made contributions. These findings are discussed in terms of the varying roles that prep schools and colleges play in one's identity.     

SCHOOL RACIAL COMPOSITION AND BIRACIAL ADOLESCENTS' SCHOOL ATTACHMENT

Despite extensive research on multiracial youth in recent years, to date, no empirical studies have analyzed how racial context may affect biracial adolescents' sense of belonging in a social institution beyond families. In this study, we examine how the racial makeup of the student body affects self-identified biracial adolescents' school attachment. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find that the proportions of white or black students in school significantly affect the school attachment of Hispanic/black, Asian/black, and American Indian/black biracial adolescents, but school racial composition in general has little influence on biracial adolescents with a partial-white identification (i.e., black/white, Hispanic/white, Asian/white, and American Indian/white). Our analyses also show that on average, students of most biracial groups display lower school attachment than their corresponding monoracial groups, but the differences from the monoracial groups with the lower school attachment are generally small. We discuss the implications of our findings for biracial adolescents' perceived racial boundaries and contemporary American race relations.     

JOB MOBILITY AND GENDER-BASED WAGE GROWTH DIFFERENTIALS

Studies of gender differences in the returns to job mobility have yielded conflicting results. We examine whether there are gender differences in mobility patterns or in the returns to different types of mobility. Our results, based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, imply that there are gender differences in mobility patterns, but there are not gender differences in the wage growth associated with different types of mobility. Therefore, it appears that empirical estimates of the gender differences in the returns to job mobility may be misleading if they do not consider the cause of separation.     

PUBLIC SCHOOL SEGREGATION AND JUVENILE VIOLENT CRIME ARRESTS IN METROPOLITAN AREAS

Previous research has established an association between residential segregation and violent crime in urban America. Our study examines whether school‐based segregation is predictive of arrests of juveniles for violent crimes in U.S. metro areas. Using Census, Uniform Crime Report, and Common Core data for 204 metro areas, a measure of school‐based racial segregation, Theil's entropy index, is decomposed into two components: between‐ and within‐district segregation. Findings reveal evidence of a significant interaction term: Within‐district segregation is inversely associated with arrests for juvenile violence, but only in metropolitan areas with higher than average levels of between‐district segregation.     

THE MARKET FOR MOTION PICTURES: RANK, REVENUE, AND SURVIVAL

Every motion picture is an innovation that competes for theater screens and audiences during its brief life against a changing array of imperfect substitutes. We analyze a large sample of motion pictures as an evolving rank tournament of survival and death. The results indicate that the failure rate of motion pictures is time-dependent and survival time is strongly related to the number of initial bookings. Weekly box office revenue is highly convex in rank, which is consistent with Rosen's superstar phenomenon. Our results have implications for motion picture licensing arrangements, which have been severely restricted by U.S. court decisions.     

ADOLESCENTS' INCONSISTENCY IN SELF-REPORTED SMOKING: A COMPARISON OF REPORTS IN SCHOOL AND IN HOUSEHOLD SETTINGS

Extent and sources of inconsistency in self-reported cigarette smoking between self-administered school surveys and household interviews was examined in two longitudinal multiethnic adolescent samples, the urban Transition to Nicotine Dependence in Adolescence (TND) (N = 832) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) (N = 4,414). Inconsistency was defined as a positive report of smoking in school followed by a negative report in the household. Smoking questions were ascertained with paper-and-pencil instruments (PAPI-SAQ) in school in both studies, and computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) in TND but audio computer-assisted self-interviewing (ACASI) in Add Health in the household. In TND, 23.5 percent of youths who reported smoking lifetime and 20.4 percent of those who reported smoking the last 12 months in the school survey reported in the household never having smoked; in Add Health, the latter was 8.6 percent. Logistic regressions identified five common correlates of inconsistency across the two studies: younger age, ethnic minority status, lesser involvement in deviant activities, having nonsmoking parents and friends. In TND, interviewing of youth and parent by the same interviewer increased inconsistent reporting. Matching the definition of inconsistent reporting and the age, gender and race/ethnic distributions of TND on an urban Add Health subsample reduced the predicted rate of inconsistency in TND. The estimated bias attributable to CAPI compared with ACASI methodology did not reach significance in the aggregated matched samples suggesting that irrespective of administration mode, household interviews decrease reporting of smoking, especially among younger, minority and more conventional youths embedded in a social network of nonsmokers.