“Scratchin’ and Surviving” or “Movin’ on Up?” Two Sources of Change in Children’s Neighborhood SES

This research investigates the extent to which racial and ethnic inequality in children’s neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) is exacerbated or attenuated via two mechanisms: changing neighborhood characteristics for residentially nonmobile children, and differences in the SES of destination versus origin neighborhoods for residentially mobile children. I use longitudinal data to estimate year-to-year change via these two mechanisms in four measures of neighborhood SES for white, black, and Latino children. I find that nonmobile white children experience greater improvement in neighborhood SES than statistically comparable black and Latino children. However, I find lower levels of inequality in neighborhood SES returns to residential mobility; in fact, in many cases those returns are greater for minority children than for white children. These findings suggest that continued inequality in children’s neighborhood contexts is not due primarily to inequality in outcomes of residential moves, but rather to the greater tendency of white children to reside in neighborhoods with higher levels of SES, and the greater likelihood of those neighborhoods to maintain or improve their levels of SES over time.

The changing nature of wage inequality

The paper reviews recent developments in the literature on wage inequality with a particular focus on why inequality growth has been particularly concentrated in the top end of the wage distribution over the last 15 years. Several possible institutional and demand-side explanations are discussed for the secular growth in wage inequality in the United States and other advanced industrialized countries.

The association between husbands’ and wives’ labor market positions in the Netherlands

This study describes (1) the association between husbands’ and wives’ employment statuses and occupations in the Netherlands, (2) establishes possible trends in the association, and (3) explores to what extent the association can be attributed to educational homogamy. We use 12 waves of the Dutch Labor Force Survey (1994–2006), and use log-linear models to analyze the associations between the labor market positions of spouses. Overall, we find positive associations, implying that favorable positions are accumulated within households. For couples with children, the association between spouses’ employment status is negative, which means that they divide paid labor. Over birth cohorts, the association between spouses’ employment statuses becomes stronger, and between spouses’ occupational success remains stable. Education is an important contributor to the occupational association, but still half of the association between spouses’ success cannot be attributed to spouses’ education.     

Labor Migration,Remittances and Economic Well-being of Households in the Philippines

Labor Migration has long been viewed as a strategy adopted by the household unit to allocate family resources rationally to increase the flows of income and to raise family standard of living. The research reported here examines the extent to which remittances sent by Filipino overseas workers increase the income and standard of living of households in the Philippines. Data for the analysis were obtained from a representative sample of 2,388 households drawn in 1999–2000 from four major “labor sending” areas in the Philippines. The analysis compares households with and without overseas workers to estimate the contribution of remittances to household income and to household standard of living (measured once by an ‘objective’ indicator and once by a ‘subjective’ assessment). The data reveal that due to remittances the income of households with overseas labor migrants is considerably higher than the income of households without overseas workers. The data also reveal that remittances are used mostly for consumption purposes (e.g. purchase of food, clothing, education, and goods) and that most of the difference in standard of living (whether measured on the ‘objective’ or the ‘subjective’ scale) between households with and without overseas workers are attributed to remittances. The implications of labor migration and the policy that encourages and supports labor migration for the Filipino society are evaluated and discussed.

Information and racial exclusion

We present several economic models of racial segregation and income inequality. The use of race as a signal arises from imperfect information about the return to transactions with particular agents. In a search framework, signaling supports not simply a discriminatory equilibrium, but a pattern of racially segregated transactions, which in turn perpetuates the informational asymmetries. Equilibrium income disparities depend on the relative size of the minority group and on the informational “distance” between races. Under some circumstances, minority agents will self-segregate since they face an adverse selection of majority agents who are willing to trade with them.

课程干预与不平等社会结构的扭转：皖东村校的尝试

本文试图以批判教育社会学中扭转不平等社会结构的理论框架为指导，发展出一种针对当前中国留守儿童的可行性课程干预实践模式。呼应文化再生产的理论，考察留守儿童的学习过程发现，其学业表现失败一方面是压制性体制下资源缺乏的结果，另一方面也和课堂学习对于底层文化和经验的忽视有关。基于文化的生产性与创造性原则，尊重底层学生的文化和经验、将课堂外的社会情境导入课堂，有可能打造出转折的图景。这一做法，首先可以通过再情境化学生的文化经验激活学生的批判意识和批判思考能力，其次可以突显留守儿童在社会和文化情境中的相对优势，进而促进其学习认同与学业成就。针对安徽新镇留守村校的以研究性学习方式呈现的课程干预试验为我们提供了引入课堂外情境的可能做法和具体效应。结合弗雷勒“提问式”教育的方法，我们探讨了“扩展的文化再生产干预路径”所具有的扭转社会结构的意义。     

Robust Inference for Inverse Stochastic Dominance

The notion of inverse stochastic dominance is gaining increasing support in risk, inequality, and welfare analysis as a relevant criterion for ranking distributions, which is alternative to the standard stochastic dominance approach. Its implementation rests on comparisons of two distributions’ quantile functions, or of their multiple partial integrals, at fixed population proportions. This article develops a novel statistical inference model for inverse stochastic dominance that is based on the influence function approach. The proposed method allows model-free evaluations that are limitedly affected by contamination in the data. Asymptotic normality of the estimators allows to derive tests for the restrictions implied by various forms of inverse stochastic dominance. Monte Carlo experiments and an application promote the qualities of the influence function estimator when compared with alternative dominance criteria.     

Socioeconomic status,perceived inequality of opportunity,and attitudes toward redistribution

Previous research suggests that an individual’s socioeconomic status (SES) is negatively associated with attitudes toward redistributive policies. The objective of this study is to examine whether the relationship between an individual’s subjective SES and his or her attitudes toward redistribution is contingent upon perceptions of inequality of opportunity. A series of multilevel analyses was performed using data from 28 countries from the 2009 International Social Survey Program (ISSP). Results revealed that the relationship between individual SES and attitudes toward redistribution was weaker among individuals who more strongly believed that success lies beyond the control of individuals. Shared perceptions of inequality of opportunity at the country level were also significant. The relationship between SES and attitudes toward redistribution was weaker in countries with higher levels of public perceptions of inequality of opportunity. In conclusion, people commensurately support redistribution policies (even contrary to their own self-interest) as they recognize the significance of inequality of opportunity. The greater the support among people for redistribution against their self-interest, the weaker the social cleavage in attitudes toward redistribution across different SES strata, and the higher the overall level of support for redistribution in society.     

Getting support in polarized societies: Income,social networks,and socioeconomic context

This paper explores how unequal resources and social and economic polarization affects the size of social networks and their use to access resources. We argue that individual resource position generates divergent expectations with regard to the impact of polarization on the size of networks on one hand, and their usefulness for accessing resources on the other. Social and economic polarization encourages reliance on informal networks, but those at the bottom of the social structure are forced to rely on more extensive networks than the wealthy to compensate for their isolated and underprivileged position. At the same time, social and economic polarization limits the resources the poor can access through their networks. We provide evidence consistent with these propositions, based on data derived from the International Social Survey Programme 2001 “Social Networks” dataset combined with contextual information on the levels of economic inequality in particular countries along with whether they experienced postcommunism.     

Curricular policy as a collective effects problem: A distributional approach

Current educational policies in the United States attempt to boost student achievement and promote equality by intensifying the curriculum and exposing students to more advanced coursework. This paper investigates the relationship between one such effort – California’s push to enroll all 8th grade students in Algebra – and the distribution of student achievement. We suggest that this effort is an instance of a “collective effects” problem, where the population-level effects of a policy are different from its effects at the individual level. In such contexts, we argue that it is important to consider broader population effects as well as the difference between “treated” and “untreated” individuals. To do so, we present differences in inverse propensity score weighted distributions investigating how this curricular policy changed the distribution of student achievement. We find that California’s attempt to intensify the curriculum did not raise test scores at the bottom of the distribution, but did lower scores at the top of the distribution. These results highlight the efficacy of inverse propensity score weighting approaches for examining distributional differences, and provide a cautionary tale for curricular intensification efforts and other policies with collective effects.