Ivies, extracurriculars, and exclusion: Elite employers’ use of educational credentials

Although a robust literature has demonstrated a positive relationship between education and socio-economic attainment, the processes through which formal schooling yields enhanced economic and social rewards remain less clear. Employers play a crucial role in explaining the returns to formal schooling yet little is known about how employers, particularly elite employers, use and interpret educational credentials. In this article, I analyze how elite professional service employers use and interpret educational credentials in real-life hiring decisions. I find that educational credentials were the most common criteria employers used to solicit and screen resumes. However, it was not the content of education that elite employers valued but rather its prestige. Contrary to common sociological measures of institutional prestige, employers privileged candidates who possessed a super-elite (e.g., top four) rather than selective university affiliation. They restricted competition to students with elite affiliations and attributed superior abilities to candidates who had been admitted to super-elite institutions, regardless of their actual performance once there. However, a super-elite university affiliation was insufficient on its own. Importing the logic of university admissions, firms performed a strong secondary screen on candidates’ extracurricular accomplishments, favoring high status, resource-intensive activities that resonated with white, upper-middle class culture. I discuss these findings in terms of the changing nature of educational credentialism to suggest that (a) extracurricular activities have become credentials of social and moral character that have monetary conversion value in labor markets and (b) the way employers use and interpret educational credentials contributes to a social closure of elite jobs based on socio-economic status.     

Welfare states and social mobility: How educational and social policy may affect cross-national differences in the association between occupational origins and destinations

Cross-national differences in the association between origins and destinations correspond to differences in both welfare regime type and access to post-secondary education. Socialist and social democratic welfare regimes foster a weaker origin–destination association than liberal, corporatist, or mixed regimes do. Nations with better-educated labor forces tend to also be the nations where the association between origins and destinations is weakest. Furthermore, the social and educational policy interact so that the tendency for educational access to lower the origin–destination association is most pronounced in the liberal welfare setting where the association would otherwise be greatest. Greater access is not necessarily associated with greater equality of opportunity, and we find very weak evidence that equality of educational opportunity itself is a direct influence on equality of occupational opportunity (even though nations that have a strong origin–education association also have a strong origin–destination association).     

Receptivity Attitudes and the Occupational Attainment of Male and Female Immigrant Workers

This paper seeks to extend assimilation scholarship by focusing on the impact ofimmigrant receptivity attitudes. We test the hypotheses that receptivity attitudestoward immigrants held by citizens of metropolitan and regional labor marketswill have a direct impact, and/or interact with the educational human capital ofimmigrants, in explaining the occupational attainment of male and female immigrantworkers. Multi-level modeling is used to test the impact of aggregated immigrantreceptivity attitude measures, derived from the General Social Survey, which arespatially merged with immigrant worker human capital, individual-level assimilation,and area labor market indicators to predict managerial/professional and service/laboroccupation attainment of immigrant workers from a merged 1995–97 CurrentPopulation Survey data file. The results provide support for the receptivity attitudesthesis with statistically significant effects on service and labor attainment, but showminimal effects on managerial and professional occupational attainment. The keyreceptivity dimensions affecting occupational attainment are native-born citizens'attitudes concerning the impact of immigrants on American society, and attitudeson English-only language policies. The results show no systematic support for thereverse causation hypothesis that the occupational patterns of immigrants determinethe immigrant receptivity attitudes of citizens.     

What are the chances of young Turks and Italians for equal education and employment in Germany? The role of objective and subjective indicators

As the recent OECD PISA studies have shown, social background plays a greater role for achieving a solid education in Germany than in most other developed countries; this is especially so for migrant youths. This paper deals with the question, which level education and qualification migrants in Germany achieve, and how their chances for achieving qualifications and positions are compared to Germans. First, an overview over results of studies on educational participation, degrees, and social inequality among migrants is given. Then I show, using data from the 2000 BiB-Integration Survey, that young Turks and Italians have achieved notably lower levels of education than Germans. Finally, I discuss possible reasons and agencies that might cause these findings, which then are scrutinised by empirical analyses. It can be found that the marked under-representation with regard to higher educational and professional degrees of young Italians and Turks is clearly related to the low educational level of their parents, as well as factors of integration and attitudes. It does become obvious, however, that Turks have lower chances that cannot be explained by their parents’ qualification or other factors. This is also the case for the second immigrant generation.     

The Benefits of Educational Attainment for U.S. Adult Mortality: Are they Contingent on the Broader Environment?

The growing recognition that educational attainment is one of the strongest preventive factors for adult health and longevity has fueled an interest in educational attainment as a population health strategy. However, less attention has been given to identifying social, economic, and behavioral resources that may moderate the health and longevity benefits of education. We draw on theories of resource substitution and multiplication to examine the extent to which the education–mortality association is contingent on other resources (marriage, employment, income, healthy lifestyles). We use data on adults aged 30–84 in the 1997–2006 National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality File and estimate discrete-time event history models stratified by gender (N = 146,558; deaths = 10,399). We find that the mortality benefits of education are generally largest for adults—especially women—who have other resources such as employment and marriage, supporting the theory of resource multiplication. Nonetheless, our results also imply that other resources can potentially attenuate the mortality disadvantages (advantages) associated with low (high) levels of education. The findings suggest that efforts to improve population health and longevity by raising education levels should be augmented with strategies that assure widespread access to social, economic, and behavioral resources.     

The Demographic Promise of Expanded Female Education: Trends in the Age at First Birth in Malawi

The expansion of female education has been promoted as a way to postpone the age at first birth. In sub‐Saharan Africa, the first cohorts to benefit from policies that expanded access to education are now reaching adulthood and beginning childbearing. I investigate whether the expansion of education in Malawi, which implemented a free primary education policy in 1994 and subsequently expanded secondary schooling, has led to a later age at first birth and whether the education gradient in fertility timing has remained stable over time. Despite increases in female grade attainment over the past twenty years, the age at first birth has not changed. Using instrumental variables analysis, I find a significant negative association between grade attainment and age at first birth, suggesting that the deterioration of school quality and the shift in the age pattern of enrollment that accompanied educational expansion may have compromised the transformative potential of education.     

Selections and social selectivity on the academic track: A life-course analysis of educational attainment in Germany

Graduating from university is just the final step of an extended educational career. Sociological transition research has revealed that final educational attainment must be understood as the result of a sequence of successive decisions. With regard to graduation from university, one has to take into account that upper secondary school qualifications are required for enrolling in the first place, and in Germany, the decision for this kind of schooling is at a much earlier age. So where on the long way to the university degree does Germany ‘lose’ its potential academics and in particular its lower class children?     

Pathways of change in social mobility: Industrialization,education and growing fluidity in Brazil

This paper explores the change in intergenerational class mobility over the last quarter-century in Brazil. Using repeated cross-sectional surveys between the early 1970s and the late 1990s and a counterfactual approach, we disentangle cohort from period interpretations of change, and examine the mechanisms driving change in fluidity among Brazilian men. We detect a substantial increase in social fluidity over time, which emerges from period transformation, rather than cohort replacement. This trend departs from industrialized nations, where growing fluidity has been found to be entirely driven by the replacement of older, more rigid cohorts by younger, more fluid ones, and to emerge from educational equalization and a “compositional effect”—educational expansion combined with a weaker intergenerational association among those with higher education. In contrast, in a context of rapid late industrialization, two mechanisms account for growing fluidity in Brazil: the decline in the “economic returns to schooling”, and the weakening of the direct influence of class origins on class destination, net of education. We discuss the implications of these patterns for the understanding of mobility dynamics in different national contexts.     

From Privilege to Prevalence: Contextual Effects of Women’s Schooling on African Marital Timing

In Africa and elsewhere, educated women tend to marry later than their less-educated peers. Beyond being an attribute of individual women, education is also an aggregate phenomenon: the social meaning of a woman’s educational attainment depends on the educational attainments of her age-mates. Using data from 30 countries and 246 birth cohorts across sub-Saharan Africa, we investigate the impact of educational context (the percentage of women in a country cohort who ever attended school) on the relationship between a woman’s educational attainment and her marital timing. In contexts where access to education is prevalent, the marital timing of uneducated and highly educated women is more similar than in contexts where attending school is limited to a privileged minority. This across-country convergence is driven by uneducated women marrying later in high-education contexts, especially through lower rates of very early marriages. However, within countries over time, the marital ages of women from different educational groups tend to diverge as educational access expands. This within-country divergence is most often driven by later marriage among highly educated women, although divergence in some countries is driven by earlier marriage among women who never attended school.     

Proletarianization with polarization: Industrialization, globalization, and social class in Turkey, 1980–2005

This paper analyzes the social class structure of Turkey during the latest wave of economic globalization in four dimensions: by sector of employment, with the Erikson–Goldthorpe–Portocarero (EGP) class schema, by occupational group, and in terms of informal employment. Since 1980, when Turkey opened to the global economy, the Turkish social class structure changed significantly. During this period, Turkey became a significant exporter of mostly low-technology, but also increasingly medium- and high-technology, manufactured goods. I contend that this economic globalization and industrialization contributed to a dual process of proletarianization and polarization. Proletarianization occurred through a transition from Turkey's agrarian tradition, a relative decline of the public sector, and an expansion of classes who sell their labor without workplace authority. Polarization entailed the growth of private-sector entrepreneurial, professional and managerial classes, and a simultaneous expansion of the informal sector. There were also differences between sexes. The share of manufacturing employment and the low-skilled labor classes expanded at rates much higher among women than among men, contributing to more rapid proletarianization.     

The continuation of education after marriage among women in the United States: 1970

Data from the 1970 National Fertility Study are used to assess the extent and determinants of post-nuptial education among women in the United States. Over one-fifth of all women have attended high school or college since marriage; over one-third either have returned to school or anticipate returning to an academic institution sometime in the future. This phenomenon is apparently increasing since women married less than five years have already attended school in as great a proportion as women married 15-19 years. Examination of differentials reveals for both blacks and whites that post-nupital education is higher among women who: (1) attended college before marriage, (2) married early, (3) are currently separated or divorced, (4) support egalitarian sex-role attitudes, or (5) whose most recent occupation is in the professional, managerial, or administrative category. Post-nuptial trends in education undoubtedly reflect the much broader social phenomenon of changing sex-role perceptions.     

Nominal comparability is not enough: (In-)equivalence of construct validity of cross-national measures of educational attainment in the European Social Survey

Educational attainment is a core social background variable covered in each and every survey of individuals. Since educational institutions and qualifications are difficult to compare across countries, cross-national surveys pose a particular challenge to the measurement of educational attainment. This study performs a comparative construct validation of a number of cross-national measures of education using the European Social Survey. The measures comprise two versions of the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED), the education scheme developed in the project ‘Comparative Analysis of Social Mobility in Industrial Nations’ (CASMIN) and hypothetical as well as actual years of education. The first ISCED measure corresponds to the well-known main ISCED levels. The second one, the European Survey Version of ISCED (ES-ISCED) developed for this study, represents an effort to reflect different types of education within levels of education by considering ISCED sub-dimensions, most importantly ‘programme orientation’. Using linear regression models, it is shown how much explanatory power educational attainment loses when different cross-national variables are used, as compared to country-specific educational attainment variables (CSEVs), and how these losses vary across measures and countries. The dependent variable used for the construct validation is social status as measured by the International Socio-Economic Index (ISEI). Results suggest that harmonisation always entails some loss of explanatory power for at least a few countries. However, there are clear performance differences between the comparable measures in terms of both the average amount of losses as well as the distribution of losses across countries. The use of actual years of education as well as the levels-only ISCED strongly attenuates the education-social status association on average, but also to very different degrees across countries. CASMIN and ES-ISCED fare considerably better: they show the lowest losses of explanatory power and the lowest variation of losses across countries. Hypothetical years of education lie in between. Some practical implications are then proposed, e.g. on how to implement cross-national measures of educational attainment in international surveys.     

Reproducing inequalities: Luck, wallets, and the enduring effects of childhood health

In this article, I argue that research on social stratification, on intergenerational transmission of inequalities, and on the theory of factor payments and wage determination will be strengthened by studying the role played by early childhood health. I show that the inclusion of such a factor requires researchers to integrate theories in each of these fields with new theories linking early childhood health conditions and events that occur at later stages in the life course of individuals, particularly physical and mental health as well as disability and mortality. The empirical evidence I gather shows that early childhood health matters for the achievement of or social accession to, adult social class positions. Even if the magnitude of associations is not overwhelming, it is not weaker than that found between adult social accession and other, more conventional and better-studied individual characteristics, such as educational attainment. It is very likely that the evidence presented in this article grossly underplays the importance of early childhood health for adult socioeconomic achievement.     

Do Measured and Unmeasured Family Factors Bias the Association Between Education and Self-Assessed Health?

The association between educational attainment and self-assessed health is well established but the mechanisms that explain this association are not fully understood yet. It is likely that part of the association is spurious because (genetic and non-genetic) characteristics of a person’s family of origin simultaneously affect one’s educational attainment and one’s adult health. In order to obtain an unbiased estimate of the association between education and health, we have to control for all relevant family factors. In practice, however, it is impossible to measure all relevant family factors. Sibling models are particularly appropriate in this case, because they control for the total impact of family factors, even if not all relevant aspects can be measured. I use data on siblings from a US study (MIDUS) and Dutch study (NKPS) to assess the total family impact on self-assessed health and, more importantly, to assess whether there is a family bias in the association between educational attainment and self-assessed health. The results suggest that there is a substantial family effect; about 20% of the variation in self-assessed health between siblings can be ascribed to (measured and unmeasured) family factors. Measured family factors, such as parental education and father’s occupation, could account only for a small part of the family effect. Furthermore, the results imply that it is unlikely that there is substantial bias due to family effects in the association between education and self-assessed health. This strengthens the conclusions from prior studies on the association between education and self-assessed health.     

Is education a risk factor or social vaccine against HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa? The effect of schooling across public health periods

Early in the 30-year HIV/AIDS pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa, epidemiological studies identified formal education attainment as a risk factor: educated Sub-Saharan Africans had a higher risk of contracting HIV/AIDS than their less educated peers. Later demographic research reported that by the mid-1990s the education effect had reversed, and education began to function as a social vaccine. Recent counter-evidence finds a curvilinear pattern, with the association between educational attainment and HIV/AIDS infection changing from positive to negative across the education gradient. To reconcile these inconsistent conclusions, a hypothesis is developed and tested that education at early stages functioned as a risk factor and later functioned (and continues to function) as a social vaccine. We reason that this shift in the direction of the education effect was concurrent with changes in the public health environment in SSA that early on heightened material benefits from educational attainment but later heightened cognitive benefits from schooling. Using the 2003/2004 Demographic Health Surveys from four Sub-Saharan African countries (Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania), we tested this hypothesis (differential effects of schooling) using non-linear regression analysis (probit), identifying the different public health periods and controlling for confounding factors. The results support the hypothesis that the education effect shifted historically in the HIV/AIDS pandemic in SSA as we hypothesized.     

A formula for determining social worker positions based upon the Pardes method

An alternative approach to traditionalad hoc methods of determining social worker positions is presented. It is based upon the collection of objective data and their inclusion in a mathematical formula. This apprach assures the employment of identical criteria and administrative procedures for the assignment of social workers' positions. It guarantees that for a given number of social work bureaux the assignment is equitable. The particular example presented is that of regional councils in Israel. The formula includes the variables: number of residents within each council's jurisdiction, and of community distress and distance travelled by social workers between the settlements of a council.     

Postpartum women’s experiences of social and healthcare professional support during the COVID-19 pandemic: A recurrent cross-sectional thematic analysis

ProblemDisrupted access to social and healthcare professional support during the COVID-19 pandemic have had an adverse effect on maternal mental health.BackgroundMotherhood is a key life transition which increases vulnerability to experience negative affect.AimExplore UK women’s postnatal experiences of social and healthcare professional support during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 women, approximately 30 days after initial social distancing guidelines were imposed (T1), and a separate 12 women were interviewed approximately 30 days after the initial easing of social distancing restrictions (T2). Recurrent cross-sectional thematic analysis was conducted in NVivo 12.FindingsT1 themes were, ‘Motherhood has been an isolating experience’ (exacerbated loneliness due to diminished support accessibility) and ‘Everything is under lock and key’ (confusion, alienation, and anxiety regarding disrupted face-to-face healthcare checks). T2 themes were, ‘Disrupted healthcare professional support’ (feeling burdensome, abandoned, and frustrated by virtual healthcare) and ‘Easing restrictions are bittersweet’ (conflict between enhanced emotional wellbeing, and sadness regarding lost postnatal time).DiscussionRespondents at both timepoints were adversely affected by restricted access to informal (family and friends) and formal (healthcare professional) support, which were not sufficiently bridged virtually. Additionally, the prospect of attending face-to-face appointments was anxiety-provoking and perceived as being contradictory to social distancing guidance. Prohibition of family from maternity wards was also salient and distressing for T2, but not T1 respondents.ConclusionHealthcare professionals should encourage maternal help-seeking and provide timely access to mental health services. Improving access to informal and formal face-to-face support are essential in protecting maternal and infant wellbeing.     

Sexual orientation and education politics: gay and lesbian representation in American schools

In what has sometimes provoked a "culture war" over America's schools, gays and lesbians have sought an expanded voice in the making of education policy. This paper explores the factors that promote gay representation on school boards, how this variable in turn influences gay representation in both administrative and teaching positions, and how all three forms of gay representation relate to school board policies regarding sexual orientation education. Three of the four models drawn from the social movement literature help to explain gay school board representation. In a manner similar to other minority groups, gay representation on school boards directly or indirectly promotes the appointment of gays to administrative and teaching positions and the adoption of policies that address the problems faced by gay and lesbian students in the public schools.     

Growing Wealth Gaps in Education

Prior research on trends in educational inequality has focused chiefly on changing gaps in educational attainment by family income or parental occupation. In contrast, this contribution provides the first assessment of trends in educational attainment by family wealth and suggests that we should be at least as concerned about growing wealth gaps in education. Despite overall growth in educational attainment and some signs of decreasing wealth gaps in high school attainment and college access, I find a large and rapidly increasing wealth gap in college attainment between cohorts born in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively. This growing wealth gap in higher educational attainment co-occurred with a rise in inequality in children’s wealth backgrounds, although the analyses also suggest that the latter does not fully account for the former. Nevertheless, the results reported here raise concerns about the distribution of educational opportunity among today’s children who grow up in a context of particularly extreme wealth inequality.     

Do all roads lead to Rome? Effect of educational trajectories on educational transitions

“Non-traditional” educational trajectories are increasingly common among American students. This study assesses the implications of this phenomenon for inequality in educational attainment. A proper account of educational trajectories requires simultaneous consideration of qualitatively different types of destinations within educational transitions, of the timing at which different transitions occur, and of the sequence of events within educational levels. To examine “traditional” and “non-traditional” pathways through post-secondary education, this study relies on detailed educational histories from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979–2002. Findings reveal that deviations from a traditional trajectory are widespread, are more frequent among students who enrolled in less selective colleges, and also among socioeconomically and academically disadvantaged students. Results show that following a “non-traditional” pathway reduces students’ chances to enroll in college and to complete a post-secondary degree. In the case of bachelor's degree completion, most of the observed gap among students from different socioeconomic backgrounds is accounted for the different trajectories students follow. This study demonstrates that a fine-grained analysis of students’ trajectories improves our understanding of the persistent socioeconomic disparities in educational attainment.