Dropping out of high school: Effects of close and distant friendships

Prior research highlights the role of friends in influencing whether a student completes high school. Students who drop out tend to have fewer friends, as well as friends who are less oriented toward school success. We distinguish between close and distant friendships by developing a theoretical framework which predicts close and distant friends likely have distinct effects on dropping out. Close friendships provide valuable emotional support, and forging numerous close friendships at school should decrease one’s risk of dropping out. In contrast, the characteristics of distant friends help shape students’ social identities and beliefs about “what’s normative.” Our analyses of the Add Health data set confirm our expectations. Students with more close friendships are less likely to drop out, but close friends’ characteristics are unrelated to dropping out. Distant relationships (as measured by affect and regularity of interaction) with friends who have a high risk of dropping out significantly increase a student’s own risk of dropping out.     

Parental investment in childhood and educational qualifications: Can greater parental involvement mediate the effects of socioeconomic disadvantage?

Parental involvement is important for later well-being since it conveys to children that parents are interested in their development. In socioeconomically disadvantaged homes this involvement becomes even more important. This paper asks: Can the social capital produced by greater parental involvement mediate some of the harmful effects of less financial capital? Data are from the National Child Development Study; a longitudinal study of children born in Britain in 1958. Results suggest that parental involvement does matter, but it depends on when involvement and economic hardship are measured, as well as type of involvement and parent gender. Father interest in education reduces the impact of economic hardship on education the most, especially at age 11. Both father and mother interest in school at age 16 have the largest direct impact on education. The frequency of outings with mother at age 11 also has a larger direct impact on education than outings with father, however, neither compare with the reduction in the effect of economic hardship as a result of father interest in school.     

Revisiting the relationship between perceived discrimination and health: Evidence from sibling models with multiple health measures

Perceived discrimination (PD) is known to be significantly related to health outcomes. This link, however, warrants further scrutiny due to the possibility of unobserved family-level confounding. Using the Add Health and sibling fixed-effect approach, we examine whether the relationship between PD and health is confounded by family background characteristics such as genetics, family environment, and childhood social context (school and neighborhood effects). While the naive OLS models exhibit significant associations between PD and both physical and psychological health outcomes, our preferred sibling fixed-effect estimates reveal that the observed associations between PD and physical health outcomes are confounded by shared family background. In contrast, the observed associations for psychological health, self-reported health, and some of health behavior outcomes are robust to adjustment for sibling fixed-effects. Furthermore, we find similar overall patterns in the link between PD and health across races/ethnicities.     

Plastic and immobile: Unequal intergenerational mobility by genetic sensitivity score within sibling pairs

Contrary to traditional biological arguments, the differential susceptibility model suggests genotype may moderate rather than mediate parent-child economic similarity. Using family fixed effects models of Add Health sibling data, I investigate the relationship between an index of sensitive genotypes and intergenerational mobility. Full, same sex sibling comparisons hold constant parental characteristics and address the non-random distribution of genotype that reduces internal validity in nationally representative samples. Across multiple measures of young adult financial standing, those with more copies of sensitive genotypes achieve lower economic outcomes than their sibling if they are from a low income context but fare better from a high income context. This genetic sensitivity to parental income entails lower intergenerational mobility. Results support the differential susceptibility model and contradict simplistic genetic explanations for intergenerational inequality, suggesting sensitive genotypes are not inherently positive or negative but rather increase dependence on parental income and reduce mobility.     

Not a family matter: The effects of religiosity on academic outcomes based on evidence from siblings

Religiosity has been positively linked with multiple measures of academic success, but it is unclear whether the “effect” of religiosity on academic outcomes is causal or spurious. One source of heterogeneity that may contribute to a child's level of religiosity and his/her academic success is family background. This paper is the first to use sibling differences to estimate the associations between religiosity on short and long-term academic success. Our analysis yields two main results. First, more religious adolescents earned higher GPAs in high school, even after including family fixed effects. Second, because they earned higher GPAs in high school, more religious adolescents completed more years of education 14 years after their religiosity was measured. Our findings suggest that adolescents' religious commitments influence their schooling in both the short and long term and should be more actively included and theorized as important drivers of educational and economic stratification.     

Does residential mobility improve educational outcomes? Evidence from the Netherlands

This paper explores the impact of residential mobility on educational outcomes. By considering a large Dutch city with substantial internal residential mobility, we examine how residential mobility influences the decision of students to drop out of school. The paper exploits a rich administrative dataset with extensive information on educational, individual, family, housing and moving characteristics of students. It combines a matching design with a multivariate regression analysis, such that the evaluation draws on a well-comparable control group for the treated students. Accounting for individual, family, educational, neighborhood and housing characteristics, as well as for school and year fixed effects, we observe that residential mobility increases the probability of school dropout in the first few years after moving. The estimated effect changes, however, to a lower risk of early school leaving after an initial period, and then changes again to a higher risk after 6 years. This effect remains, regardless the level of education the students attended, or whether the student moves to a better or a worse neighborhood.     

Light and shadows: An analysis of racial differences between siblings in Brazil

Using data from the 2010 Census of Brazil, this article quantitatively examines the phenomenon of sibling differences in racial classification. In sum, the findings demonstrate that within-sibling racial heterogeneity occurs in 17–19% of families. The strongest predictor of racial discordance between siblings is racial discordance between parents. Furthermore, within-sibling regression models establish that race exhibits a modest but statistically significant association with some education and labor market outcomes. Most outcomes are not associated with race for siblings aged 15–19, although in families with both sexes, darker females have more favorable educational outcomes, while darker males have less favorable outcomes. In contrast, darker siblings aged 20–25 are less advantaged than their lighter brothers and sisters along a number of dimensions. They have significantly lower education, lower personal income, lower formal employment, and lower occupational status. It is argued that patterns for siblings aged 20–25 may be indicative of individual racial discrimination.     

Improving models of democracy: The example of lagged effects of economic development,education, and gender equality

The author examines how time delayed effects of economic development, education, and gender equality influence political democracy. Literature review shows inadequate understanding of lagged effects, which raises methodological and theoretical issues with the current quantitative studies of democracy. Using country-years as a unit of analysis, the author estimates a series of OLS PCSE models for each predictor with a systematic analysis of the distributions of the lagged effects. The second set of multiple OLS PCSE regressions are estimated including all three independent variables. The results show that economic development, education, and gender have three unique trajectories of the time-delayed effects: Economic development has long-term effects, education produces continuous effects regardless of the timing, and gender equality has the most prominent immediate and short term effects. The results call for the reassessment of model specifications and theoretical setups in the quantitative studies of democracy.     

Overlapping disadvantages and the racial/ethnic graduation gap among students attending selective institutions

Using a configurational approach, I examine the extent to which the intersection between background attributes can account for racial and ethnic gaps in graduation likelihood among students attending elite institutions in the United States. The results, which are based on the College & Beyond database, demonstrate the compounding effect of multiple disadvantages on students’ graduation likelihood, above and beyond the unique hardship associated with each background characteristic. Under-represented minority students are more likely to suffer from overlapping disadvantages than whites and Asians, but given similar constellations of disadvantages most minority students perform as well as whites. However, black students with overlapping disadvantages are slightly less likely to graduate than their white configuration-counterparts. About third of the overall race gap is attributed to the compounding effect of overlapping disadvantages on blacks’ achievement. That black male students with overlapping disadvantages are the most vulnerable group of all reveals an intersection between gender, race and class.     

Intergenerational solidarity and intragenerational relations between adult siblings

Few studies have yet investigated how intergenerational solidarity between parents and adult children is associated with intragenerational relations between siblings. Theoretically, one might expect compensation between inter- and intragenerational relationship solidarity as well as spillover effects from parent-child solidarity to sibling solidarity. Using data from the German Family Panel (pairfam), this study analyzes 5410 interviews with young adults who provided detailed information on the relationships to their parents and up to four siblings. Focusing on four dimensions of relationships in families (contact, emotional closeness, intimacy, and conflict), hierarchical linear regression results provide general support for the assumption that inter- and intragenerational relations reinforce each other. We also find evidence for the existence of partially compensating relationships: more frequent intergenerational conflicts, for example, not only predict more frequent conflicts between siblings, but also greater intimacy. The results are in line with predictions derived from family systems theory as well as social learning and attachment theories.     

Too much of a good thing? Economic growth and human rights, 1960 to 2010

Despite widespread belief in the benefits of economic growth, some scholars emphasize the potentially negative consequences of growth—and especially rapid growth—for social and political outcomes. Using data for 149 countries between 1960 and 2010, I analyze the effect of economic growth on fundamental human rights conditions. Dynamic random-effects and two-way fixed-effects estimators, both with and without instrumental variables, yield several conclusions. First, economic growth is causally prior to rights conditions. Second, economic growth has a modest positive effect on human rights, albeit with diminishing returns at high growth rates. Third, low-income countries account for much of this relationship: growth improves rights conditions for most low-income countries, but extremely rapid growth is inimical. Growth has little effect among middle-income countries, while for high-income countries the relationship is positive but not robust. I bring these findings to bear on long-standing debates between proponents and critics of modernization theory.     

风险社会背景下大学生的信仰危机

当今,世界正由工业社会向风险社会过渡,信仰危机是当代人类面临的全球性问题,信仰危机的出现要求我们关注信仰教育。受全球化的影响,中国也处于风险社会之中。大学生作为我国社会主义事业的接班人,其信仰状况直接关系到国家的前途和命运。本文首先阐述了信仰以及信仰危机的含义,然后分析了我国大学生当前存在的信仰危机及其产生的原因,最后对于解决我国大学生的信仰危机提出了几点建议。     

Schooling, Work, and Idleness among Mexican and Non-Latino White Adolescents

This article examines the activities of Mexican and non-Latino white adolescents using multilevel data from the 1990 U.S. Census. A primary aim of the research is to evaluate whether the classic assimilation model or a model of segmented assimilation best describes the generational pattern of schooling among Mexican-origin youth. Results show that foreign-born Mexicans are more likely to drop out of school than their native-born counterparts, but the behavior of the foreign born depends upon age at immigration. Third(+)-generation Mexicans are more likely to drop out of school than both second-generation Mexicans and non-Latino whites. Youth residing in the central city or in MSA/PMSAs with unfavorable economic characteristics are more likely to drop out of school than others. Consistent with a segmented assimilation model, the generational pattern of schooling for Mexican youth differs for those living in the central city and those living outside the central city.     

Neighborhood distress and school dropout: the variable significance of community context

Although a substantial body of recent research has examined the impact of neighborhood socioeconomic distress on youth socioeconomic attainment and urban social dislocations, few studies have determined under what conditions, and for what types of adolescents, neighborhood characteristics matter most. Drawing on theories of collective socialization, social capital, and social control, we develop hypotheses regarding the conditional nature of neighborhood effects on the risk of dropping out of high school, and we then test these hypotheses by estimating event history models based on data from the 1968–1993 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We find that, among African Americans, the detrimental impact of neighborhood socioeconomic distress on school dropout has increased significantly over the past quarter-century, a probable repercussion of the increasing geographic concentration of urban poverty. The negative effect of neighborhood distress on high school completion is particularly pronounced among black adolescents from single-parent households and among white adolescents from low-income families, results broadly consistent with Wilson’s claim that exposure to neighborhood poverty reinforces the damaging consequences of individual disadvantage. Supporting the social capital perspective, among both black and white adolescents the deleterious impact of neighborhood distress on school dropout is stronger for recent in-movers than for long-term residents. The impact of neighborhood disadvantage also varies significantly by gender for both racial groups and, among whites, is stronger for younger than older adolescents. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for theories of neighborhood effects.     

The 9th grade shock and the high school dropout crisis

Retrospective questions on educational attainment in national surveys and censuses tend to over-estimate high school graduation rates by 15-20% points relative to administrative records. Administrative data on educational enrollment are, however, only available at the aggregate level (state, school district, and school levels) and the recording of inter-school transfers are generally incomplete. With access to linked individual-level administrative records from a very large “West Coast metropolitan school district” we track patterns of high school attrition and on-time high school graduation of individual students. Even with adjustments for the omission of out-of-district transfers (estimates of omission are presented), the results of this study show that failure in high school, as indexed by retention and attrition, are almost as common as on-time high school graduation. In addition to the usual risk factors of disadvantaged background, we find that the “9th grade shock”—an unpredicted decline in academic performance upon entering high school—is a key mechanism behind the continuing crisis of high school attrition.     

Intermediate peer contexts and educational outcomes: Do the friends of students' friends matter?

Sociologists of education have long been interested in the effects of peer relations on educational outcomes. Recent theory and research on adolescence suggest that peers on the boundaries of students' friendship networks may play an important role in shaping behaviors and educational outcomes. In this study, we examine the importance of a key “intermediate peer context” for students' outcomes: the friends of a student's friends. Our findings indicate both friends' and friends' friends' characteristics independently predict students' college expectations and their risk of dropping out of high school (although only friends' characteristics predict GPA). Our models suggest the magnitude of students' friends-of-friends’ characteristics are at least as large their friends' characteristics. Together, the association between the peer context and students outcomes is considerably larger when accounting for both the characteristics of students' friends and the friends of their friends.     

Similarity in peer college preferences: New evidence from texas

In this paper, I use survey data from high school students in Texas to examine the magnitude of peer correlation in college preferences and choices. In this survey, respondents (and their classmates) recorded their preferences for attending specific colleges, and a follow up survey recorded their college enrollment decisions. This paper uses this information to present the first empirical examination of whether individuals who report preferences for “popular” colleges are more likely to attend their preferred college. The rich data set allows the use of often unavailable information such as distance to college, and the construction of the “popularity” variable allows the use of school-level fixed effects. Results indicate that individuals with 10 percentage points more classmates with matching college preferences are 3 percentage points more likely to enroll in their preferred college.     

Effects of family structure on the risk of first premarital birth in the presence of correlated unmeasured family effects

This paper assesses the effects of family structure on the risk of a first premarital birth for a sample of women from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The sample reflects the family structure and family formation experiences of a cohort of women who were at risk of out-of-wedlock childbearing during the 1980s and early 1990s. We focus on assessing the effects of family structure in the presence of correlated unmeasured family effects, which are identified through the use of sibling data. The availability of multiple sibling respondents per family permits identification of family-level unobserved heterogeneity in a multi-level context of individuals nested within families. Our models account for family-specific sources of unobserved heterogeneity in the processes generating family structure and nonmarital childbearing, and provide estimates of the association between these sources of unobserved heterogeneity along with the effects of family structure and other covariates. We find that accounting for the correlation between unobserved family-level effects in processes generating family structure and first premarital birth leads to attenuated estimates of the effects family structure on the risk of first premarital birth. This suggests that other family-level factors may play a mediating role in generating both family structure and nonmarital childbearing.     

Material hardship and 529 college savings plan participation: The mitigating effects of Child Development Accounts

Experience of material hardship can adversely affect a family’s ability to make long-term investments in children’s development. We examine whether material hardship is associated with one indicator of such investments: participation in a tax-advantaged college savings plan (529 plan). Data for this study come from the SEED for Oklahoma Kids (SEED OK) experiment, an intervention that offers Child Development Accounts with financial incentives to encourage the accumulation of college savings for children from the time of their birth. Results show that material hardship is negatively associated with 529-plan participation, and this association varies by treatment status. At all levels of material hardship, treatment-group mothers are more likely to hold accounts than control-group mothers. These findings suggest that CDAs can be a useful policy tool to support families’ financial preparation for college.     

Global biodiversity decline of marine and freshwater fish: A cross-national analysis of economic, demographic, and ecological influences

We test competing hypotheses from political–economic and neo-liberal theories about the effects of economic growth and urbanization on a neglected, but important, indicator of environmental health: aquatic biodiversity. We analyze cross-national data on the number of threatened fish species within national territorial waters using negative binomial regression. We find that, counter to the expectations of neo-liberal theories, economic growth increases the likelihood of fish species becoming threatened within nations. Urbanization, however, appears to have no additional effect. The “environmental Kuznets curve” does not hold for aquatic biodiversity, suggesting that further economic growth in nations is likely to escalate the biodiversity crisis.