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Educational Tracking and the Polygenic Prediction of Education

By on March 18, 2024 in Articles

Hannu Lahtinen, Pekka Martikainen, Kaarina Korhonen, Tim Morris, Mikko Myrskylä

Sociological Science March 18, 2024
10.15195/v11.a8

Abstract

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Educational systems that separate students into curriculum tracks later may place less emphasis on socioeconomic family background and allow individuals’ personal skills and interests more time to manifest. We tested whether postponing tracking from age 11 to 16 results in stronger genetic prediction of education across a population, exploiting the natural experiment of the Finnish comprehensive school reform between 1972 and 1977. The association between polygenic score of education and achieved education strengthened after the reform by one-third among men and those from low-educated families. We observed no evidence for reform effect among women or those from high-educated families. The first cohort experiencing the new system had the strongest increases. From the perspective of genetic prediction, the school reform promoted equality of opportunity and optimal allocation of human capital. The results also suggest that turbulent circumstances, including puberty or ongoing restructuring of institutional practices, may strengthen genetic associations in education.
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Hannu Lahtinen: Population Research Unit, University of Helsinki; Max Planck – University of Helsinki Center for Social Inequalities in Population Health, Helsinki, Finland
E-mail: hannu.lahtinen@helsinki.fi

Pekka Martikainen: Population Research Unit, University of Helsinki; Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany; Max Planck – University of Helsinki Center for Social Inequalities in Population Health, Helsinki, Finland
E-mail: pekka.martikainen@helsinki.fi

Kaarina Korhonen: Population Research Unit, University of Helsinki; Max Planck – University of Helsinki Center for Social Inequalities in Population Health, Helsinki, Finland
E-mail: kaarina.korhonen@helsinki.fi

Tim Morris: Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Social Research Institute, University College London
E-mail: t.t.morris@ucl.ac.uk

Mikko Myrskylä: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany; University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; Max Planck – University of Helsinki Center for Social Inequalities in Population Health, Rostock, Germany and Helsinki, Finland
E-mail: myrskyla@demogr.mpg.de

Acknowledgements: Special thanks for Aysu Okbay for providing education GWAS summary results excluding overlapping samples. We also thank the Finnish National Agency for Education for providing municipal-specific school-reform implementation years. The genetic samples used for the research were obtained from the THL Biobank (study number: THLBB2020_8), and we thank all study participants for their generous participation in the THL Biobank.

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: Instructions for data access and code to reproduce the analysis can be found at https://github.com/halahti/SocSci23

  • Citation: Lahtinen, Hannu, Pekka Martikainen, Kaarina Korhonen, Tim Morris, and Mikko Myrskylä. 2024. “Educational tracking and the polygenic prediction of education.” Sociological Science 11: 186-213.
  • Received: September 19, 2023
  • Accepted: October 31, 2023
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Nan Dirk de Graaf
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a8


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Validating the White Flight Hypothesis: Neighborhood Racial Composition and Out-Migration in Two Longitudinal Surveys

By on March 14, 2024 in Articles

Peter Mateyka, Matthew Hall

Sociological Science March 14, 2024
10.15195/v11.a7

Abstract

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Empirical research assessing the link between neighborhood racial composition and out-migration has largely relied on a single sample from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). In this article, we validate these models by comparing estimates from the PSID to estimates from identical models based on internal Census data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Doing so serves two purposes: (1) as a replication exercise for findings with major implications for racial/ethnic inequality and (2) as an expansion of the scope of ‘flight’ models to test mobility models among contemporary samples of white, black, Latino, and Asian households. Results from these models indicate that white households’ migration responses to minority racial concentrations are substantively similar in SIPP and PSID, with the likelihood of out-migration among whites increasing as minority shares grow, albeit weaker in SIPP than the PSID. Results for black householders are comparable across samples, with blacks demonstrating a tendency to leave Hispanic neighborhoods. Results for Hispanic households are, however, divergent between the SIPP and PSID, potentially reflecting differences in the representativeness of the samples. Lastly, the results from SIPP reveal that the mobility behaviors of Asian households are largely indifferent to neighborhood racial composition.
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Peter Mateyka: Department of Housing and Urban Development, Policy Development and Research
E-mail: peter.j.mateyka@hud.gov

Matthew Hall: Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, Cornell Population Center, Cornell University
E-mail: mhall@cornell.edu

Acknowledgements: This work is released to inform interested parties of ongoing research and to encourage discussion of work in progress. Peter Mateyka completed his work on this project while employed at the U.S. Census Bureau. The Census Bureau has reviewed this data product for unauthorized disclosure of confidential information and has approved the disclosure avoidance practices applied. Census Bureau data privacy policy prohibits the sharing of data or code used in this analysis. Any views or opinions expressed in the article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development or the U.S. Census Bureau. Please direct correspondence to Peter Mateyka, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, PDR, 451 7th Street S.W.,Washington, DC 20410, or via email at peter.j.mateyka@hud.gov.


Replication Package: Programs to replicate the PSID analysis are available online at https://osf.io/3rvfa/. These files require authorization to use restricted-access PSID geocodes, managed by the University of Michigan (see https://simba.isr.umich.edu/restricted/RestrictedUse.aspx).
  • Citation: Mateyka, Peter, and Matthew Hall. 2024. “Validating the White Flight Hypothesis: Neighborhood Racial Composition and Out-Migration in Two Longitudinal Surveys.” Sociological Science 11: 164-185.
  • Received: July 20, 2023
  • Accepted: December 20, 2023
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Maria Abascal
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a7


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Differences in Academic Preparedness Do Not Fully Explain Black–White Enrollment Disparities in Advanced High School Coursework

By on March 11, 2024 in Articles

João M. Souto-Maior, Ravi Shroff

Sociological Science March 11, 2024
10.15195/v11.a6

Abstract

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Whether racial disparities in enrollment in advanced high school coursework can be attributed to differences in prior academic preparation is a central question in sociological research and education policy. However, previous investigations face methodological limitations, for they compare race-specific enrollment rates of students after adjusting for characteristics only partially related to their academic preparedness for advanced coursework. Informed by a recently-developed statistical technique, we propose and estimate a novel measure of students’ academic preparedness and use administrative data from the New York City Department of Education to measure differences in Advanced Placement (AP) mathematics enrollment rates among similarly prepared students of different races. We find that preexisting differences in academic preparation do not fully explain the under-representation of Black students relative to White students in AP mathematics. Our results imply that achieving equal opportunities for AP enrollment not only requires equalizing earlier academic experiences, but also addressing inequities that emerge from coursework placement processes.
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João M. Souto-Maior: The Institute of Human Development and Social Change, New York University
E-mail: jms1738@nyu.edu

Ravi Shroff: Department of Applied Statistics, Social Science, and Humanities, New York University
E-mail: ravi.shroff@nyu.edu

Acknowledgements: We thank Johann Gaebler, Sharad Goel, Jongbin Jung and L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy for helpful comments and feedback. This study was conducted with data obtained through the Research Alliance for New York City Schools. The findings and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Research Alliance.

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: See the Data and Code Availability Statement on page 158.

  • Citation: Souto-Maior, João, and Ravi Shroff. 2024. “Differences in academic preparedness do not fully explain Black-White enrollment disparities in advanced high school coursework.” Sociological Science 11: 138-163.
  • Received: October 30, 2023
  • Accepted: December 19, 2023
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Jeremy Freese
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a6


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Classed Burdens: Habitus and Administrative Burden during the COVID-19 Pandemic

By on March 7, 2024 in Articles

Taylor Laemmli

Sociological Science March 7, 2024
10.15195/v11.a5

Abstract

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This paper shows how class shaped service workers’ experiences of administrative burdens during the COVID-19 pandemic. I use the pandemic and pandemic-related shutdowns as a pseudo natural experiment in which job loss was applied to a set of workers from different class backgrounds and with different class locations, workers who then turned to the state for assistance. Drawing on 46 interviews I conducted with service workers across the United States from May to October of 2020, I use Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus to show how class background shaped the administrative burdens workers encountered. Workers’ class origins left them with distinct approaches to bureaucracy that translated into disparate experiences of administrative burdens when workers sought unemployment insurance benefits. As a result, compared to workers from middle-class backgrounds, workers from working-class backgrounds more often experienced housing difficulties, dangerous work, and challenges to their sense of integrity.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Taylor Laemmli: Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
E-mail: laemmli@wisc.edu

Acknowledgements: I thank Chloe Haimson, Mustafa Emirbayer, and Ryan Ellis for valuable feedback. For helpful research assistance, I thank Morgan Barlin, Alexis Bernhardt, Novak He, Clara McKinney, Julia Mann, Siying Qu, and Damini Rao. The paper benefited from participants’ comments at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Laemmli, Taylor. 2024. “Classed Burdens: Habitus and Administrative Burden during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Sociological Science 11: 114-137.
  • Received: August 24, 2023
  • Accepted: October 13, 2023
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Kristen Schilt
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a5


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Emerging Pronoun Practices After the Procedural Turn: Disclosure, Discovery, and Repair

By on March 1, 2024 in Articles

Julieta Goldenberg, Rogers Brubaker

Sociological Science March 1, 2024
10.15195/v11.a4

Abstract

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We examine emerging practices of pronoun disclosure, discovery, and repair after the procedural turn in pronoun politics, which shifted attention from the substantive question of which pronouns should be used to the procedural question of how preferred pronouns, whatever they might be, could be effectively communicated to others. Drawing on interviews with and observations of college students and recent graduates who are committed in principle to using preferred pronouns, we consider how they seek to do so in practice, focusing on practices of disclosure, discovery, and repair. We underscore the gap between the knowledge that is required in principle to use preferred pronouns consistently and the imperfect knowledge that pronoun-users have in practice, and we show how the use of preferred pronouns creates new forms of interactional accountability.
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Julieta Goldenberg: Independent Scholar
E-mail: jgoldenberg@g.ucla.edu

Rogers Brubaker: Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
E-mail: brubaker@soc.ucla.edu

Acknowledgements:The authors thank Zsuzsa Berend and Wisam Alshaibi for working closely with Goldenberg on her thesis project; Zsuzsa Berend also provided helpful comments on a draft of the article.

The interview and observational data for this article were collected and analyzed by Goldenberg for her senior honors thesis, entitled “Pronoun Disclosure: Surveillance, Setting, and Repair.” Brubaker developed the overall framing of the argument of the article, whereas most of the specific arguments were developed in Goldenberg’s thesis. Brubaker drafted the article, incorporating and reworking material from Goldenberg’s thesis.

  • Citation: Goldenberg, Julieta, and Rogers Brubaker. 2024. “Emerging Pronoun Practices after the Procedural Turn: Disclosure, Discovery, and Repair.” Sociological Science 11: 91-113.
  • Received: December 1, 2023
  • Accepted: January 17, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Kristen Schilt
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a4


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Breaking Barriers or Persisting Traditions? Fertility Histories, Occupational Achievements, and Intergenerational Mobility of Italian Women

By on February 25, 2024 in Articles

Filippo Gioachin, Anna Zamberlan

Sociological Science February 25, 2024
10.15195/v11.a3

Abstract

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Women and men share comparable levels of intergenerational social mobility in all Western economies, except for Southern European countries, where women’s life chances appear less determined by their family background. This is puzzling given Southern European’s persistent familialism, lack of institutional support for mothers, and the strong influence of social origin. We examine the role of women’s social class of origin on occupational achievements across birth cohorts in Italy, focusing on the close link between fertility dynamics and social mobility opportunities. By leveraging nationally representative retrospective data, we observed that middle- and working-class women experienced upgraded occupational achievements across birth cohorts in conjunction with educational expansion. Conversely, upper-class women exhibited consistently lower occupational achievements, especially those becoming mothers at a comparatively younger age, facing a higher risk of intergenerational downward mobility. Notably, the poorer labor market achievements of recent generations of upper-class women compared to the previous generations already emerged at labor market entry, suggesting that adverse self-selection mechanisms in early motherhood might be largely responsible for Italian women’s greater overall relative mobility. In Italy, women’s higher social mobility than men’s more likely reflects persistent traditional work–family choices among the better-off than a signal of growing equality of opportunity.
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Filippo Gioachin: Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento
E-mail: filippo.gioachin@unitn.it

Anna Zamberlan: Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento
E-mail: anna.zamberlan@unitn.it

Acknowledgements:Earlier versions of this study were presented at the 2022 ISA RC28 Spring Meeting in London, at the 2022 conference of the Italian Society for Economic Sociology (SISEC) in Bologna, and at the University of Konstanz. We would like to thank the participants for their valuable feedback. We are particularly grateful to Davide Gritti, Giorgio Cutuli, Stefani Scherer, Matteo Piolatto, and Michael Zaslavsky for their thorough reading and detailed suggestions. Furthermore, we wish to thank the Doctoral School of Social Sciences of the University of Trento for supporting our research. Any remaining errors are our responsibility.

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: Access to the microdata is granted free of charge upon formal request for ‘scientific use files’ by members of a recognized research institution, as indicated on the following website: https://www.istat.it/en/analysis-and-products/microdata-files. Replication codes have been made public at: https://osf.io/7qey4/?view_only=.

  • Citation: Gioachin, Filippo, and Anna Zamberlan. 2024. “Breaking Barriers or Persisting Traditions? Fertility histories, occupational achievements, and intergenerational mobility of Italian women.” Sociological Science 11: 67-90.
  • Received: October 20, 2023
  • Accepted: December 12, 2023
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Maria Abascal
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a3


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Criminal Record Stigma in the Labor Market for College Graduates: A Mixed Methods Study

By on January 15, 2024 in Articles

Michael Cerda-Jara, David J. Harding, The Underground Scholars Research Cohort

Sociological Science January 15, 2024
10.15195/v11.a2

Abstract

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One of the primary ways in which contact with the criminal legal system creates and maintains inequality is through the stigma of a criminal record. Although the negative effects of the stigma of a criminal record are well-documented, existing research is limited to the low-wage labor market. Through a job application audit design, this study examines the role of criminal record stigma in the labor market for recent college graduates across Black, Latino, and white men. We find that criminal record stigma has a large effect among white college-educated men but not among Black or Latino men and find no evidence that earning a college degree after the record mitigates criminal record stigma. In-depth interviews with college-educated men with a criminal record show that the criminal record stigma has effects beyond the initial application stage, as many reported provisional job offers being rescinded following a criminal background check, leading participants to limit the jobs to which they applied.
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Michael Cerda-Jara: Department of Sociology, Stanford University
E-mail: mcerda@stanford.edu

David J. Harding: Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
E-mail: dharding@berkeley.edu

The Underground Scholars Research Cohort: University of California, Berkeley

Acknowledgements:We thank the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UC Berkeley for research funding. The Underground Scholars Research Cohort includes Mac Hoang, Juan Flores, Apollo Rosas Hernandez, Maura Barry, Luis Lopez-Ortiz, Sammie Gilmore, Tonatiuh Beltran, and Joshua Mason. We also thank Arturo Calvario-Diaz, Da Eun Jung, Fernanda Ochoa, Tanaell Villanueva Reyes, and Leslie Sandoval for excellent research assistance.

Supplemental Material

Reproducibility Package: Reproducibility package can be found at https://osf.io/q83ka/

  • Citation: Cerda-Jara, Michael, David J. Harding, and The Underground Scholars Research Cohort. 2024. “Criminal Record Stigma in the Labor Market for College Graduates: A Mixed Methods Study.” Sociological Science 11: 42-66.
  • Received: August 10, 2023
  • Accepted: September 18, 2023
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Maria Abascal
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a2


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Old World Trade Diasporas

By on January 8, 2024 in Articles

Lisa Blaydes, Christopher Paik

Sociological Science January 8, 2024
10.15195/v11.a1

Abstract

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What explains worldwide, historical patterns of trade diaspora dispersal? In the premodern period, trade diasporas were among the most important communities facilitating cross-cultural exchange over long distances. We argue that two general principles explain the proliferation of premodern trade diasporas. First, diaspora merchants were drawn to wealthy societies with the goal of obtaining access to high-value luxury goods produced through the development of complex supply chains. Second, traders sought to establish diaspora communities in locations that exhibited bioclimatic complementarities to the merchant’s home region, thereby assisting the procurement of relatively uncommon natural resources. To empirically assess these arguments, we examine the historical record for information about the product composition of historical trade; collect data on the locations of trade diaspora communities across Eurasia between 600 and 1600 AD; and develop an agent-based model that specifies the agents’ (i.e., traders’) rule-based decisions to migrate in a wealth and resource-differentiated geographic space that represents Eurasia. Taken together, our findings describe the conditions that facilitated diaspora creation and historical cross-cultural exchange — a topic of rich exploration in the fields of global historical sociology and international political economy.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Lisa Blaydes: Department of Political Science, Stanford University
E-mail: blaydes@stanford.edu

Christopher Paik: Division of Social Science, New York University Abu Dhabi
E-mail: cp92@nyu.edu

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Advait Arun, Binaya Paudyal, and Keshar Shahi for outstanding research assistance. Michael Aklin, Killian Clarke, Gary Cox, Vikram Deshmukh, Rowan Dorin, Jack Goldstone, Mark Granovetter, David Laitin, Steven Liao, Timur Kuran, Andrew Wojtanik, and audiences at Columbia University, Copenhagen Business School, Duke University, Harvard University, Korea University, Princeton University, Sogang University, Sungkyunkwan University, Stanford University, The Graduate Institute (IHEID), UC Berkeley, University of Bologna, University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Rochester provided helpful comments.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Blaydes, Lisa, and Christopher Paik. 2024. “Old World Trade Diasporas.” Sociological Science 11: 1-41.
  • Received: January 8, 2023
  • Accepted: May 2, 2023
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Peter Bearman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a1


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Evolutionary Influences on Assistance to Kin: Evidence from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics

By on December 16, 2023 in Articles

Andrew J. Cherlin

Sociological Science December 16, 2023
10.15195/v10.a34

Abstract

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Amid the changes that have diversified family life, studies have shown the continuing importance of attachment to kin through established patterns such as ties among full siblings and newer patterns such as efforts by donor-conceived individuals to find their donor siblings. Sociologists have good explanations for the diversity of family forms but not for the persistence of kinship ties. This article argues that evolutionary processes focused on genetic relatedness can provide a partial explanation for both the persistence and expansion of kinship ties. It proposes that the easing of social constraints on family-related behaviors and the resulting expansion of choices may have increased the importance of genetic relatedness in producing the current patterns. To illustrate this perspective, this article examines the consistency between patterns of financial assistance to kin and Hamilton’s rule, derived from the evolutionary theory of inclusive fitness, using the 1985 to 2019 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID).
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Andrew J. Cherlin: Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University
E-mail: cherlin@jhu.edu

Acknowledgements: I thank Dalton Conley, Frank Furstenberg, Rosemary Hopcroft, and Robert Schoen for comments on previous drafts. Data and analysis files are available at the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research, project number is openicpsr-193132.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Cherlin, Andrew J. 2023. “Evolutionary Influences on Assistance to Kin: Evidence from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics.” Sociological Science 10: 964-988.
  • Received: June 21, 2023
  • Accepted: August 10, 2023
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Werner Raub
  • DOI: 10.15195/v10.a34


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'13 Reasons Why' Probably Increased Emergency Room Visits for Self-Harm among Teenage Girls

By on December 11, 2023 in Articles

Chris Felton

Sociological Science December 11, 2023
10.15195/v10.a33

Abstract

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I present evidence that the release of Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why—a fictional series about the aftermath of a teenage girl’s suicide—caused a temporary spike in emergency room (ER) visits for self-harm among teenage girls in the United States. I conduct an interrupted time series analysis using monthly counts of ER visits obtained from a large, nationally representative survey. I estimate that the show caused an increase of 1,297 self-harm visits (95 percent CI: 634 to 1,965) the month it was released, a 14 percent (6.5 percent, 23 percent) spike relative to the predicted counterfactual. The effect persisted for two months, and ER visits for intentional cutting—the method of suicide portrayed in the series—were unusually high following the show’s release. The findings indicate that fictional portrayals of suicide can influence real-life self-harm behavior, providing support for contagion-based explanations of suicide. Methodologically, the study showcases how to make credible causal claims when effect estimates are likely biased.
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Chris Felton: Postdoctoral Fellow, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University. This study was completed while the author was a PhD student in the Department of Sociology and Office of Population Research at Princeton University.
E-mail: christopher_felton@gse.harvard.edu

Acknowledgements: For helpful discussions and feedback relevant to this project, I thank (in reverse-alphabetical order) Brandon Stewart, Varun Satish, Momoko Nishikido, Ian Lundberg, Marielle Côté-Gendreau, Dalton Conley, members of the Stewart Lab, the editor, and the anonymous referees. Replication data and code can be found at https://github.com/cmfelton/13rw. All errors are my own.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Felton, Chris. 2023. “’13 Reasons Why’ Probably Increased Emergency Room Visits for Self-Harm among Teenage Girls.” Sociological Science 10: 930-963.
  • Received: March 15, 2023
  • Accepted: March 31, 2023
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Peter Bearman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v10.a33


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Subjective Political Polarization

By on November 27, 2023 in Articles

Hyunku Kwon, John Levi Martin

Sociological Science November 27, 2023
10.15195/v10.a32

Abstract

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Although the political polarization literature has provided important insights in understanding the structure of political attitudes in the United States at the aggregate level, and how this has changed in recent years, few attempts have been made to examine how each individual subjectively perceives political space and how she locates herself vis-à-vis her political in/out groups at the individual level. To examine such subjective polarization, this paper proposes an approach that examines the trifold relationship between a political actor and the two major political parties. Such relational properties are studied by looking at how each individual locates herself in relation to political in/out groups. Using the American National Election Studies Dataset, this paper sheds new light on the patterns and trends of mass polarization in the United States and demonstrates that subjective polarization has a distinct contribution to partisan animus, or “affective polarization.”
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Hyunku Kwon: Department of Sociology, University of Chicago
E-mail: hyunkukwon@uchicago.edu

John Levi Martin: Department of Sociology, University of Chicago
E-mail: jlmartin@uchicago.edu

Acknowledgements: We thank Eric J. Oliver, Elisabeth Clemens, Oscar Stuhler, Austin Kozlowski, Benjamin Rohr, and Jake Burchard for their comments and suggestions on the earlier draft. We also appreciate the input from the participants of Culture and Action Network. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the meetings of 2020 American Politics Workshop and Politics, History, and Society Workshop at the University of Chicago, and at the 2021 meeting of American Sociological Association.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Kwon, Hyunku, and John Levi Martin. 2023. “Subjective Political Polarization.” Sociological Science 10: 903–929.
  • Received: August 3, 2023
  • Accepted: August 23, 2023
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Peter Bearman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v10.a32


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Does Schooling Affect Socioeconomic Inequalities in Educational Attainment? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Germany

By on November 20, 2023 in Articles

Michael Grätz

Sociological Science November 20, 2023
10.15195/v10.a31

Abstract

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Critical theories of education and the dynamics of skill formation model predict that the education system reproduces socioeconomic inequalities in educational attainment. Previous empirical studies comparing changes in socioeconomic inequalities in academic performance over the summer to changes in these inequalities during the school year have argued, however, that schooling reduces inequalities in educational performance. The present study highlights the question of whether schooling affects socioeconomic inequalities in educational attainment by analyzing a natural experiment that induces exogenous variation in the length of schooling and allowed me to investigate the causal, long-term effects of the length of schooling on inequalities in educational attainment. Some German states moved the school start from spring to summer in 1966/1967 and introduced two short school years, each of which was three months shorter than a regular school year. I use variation in the short school years across cohorts and states to estimate the causal effects of the length of schooling on socioeconomic inequalities in educational attainment based on two German panel surveys. Less schooling due to the short school years did not affect inequalities in educational attainment. This finding runs counter to the results from the summer learning literature and to the predictions of the dynamics of skill formation model and critical theories of education. I conclude by discussing the implications of this finding for our understanding of socioeconomic inequalities in educational attainment.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Michael Grätz: Swiss Centre for Expertise in Life Course Research LIVES, University of Lausanne, Swedish Institute for Social Research SOFI, Stockholm University
E-mail: michael.gratz@unil.ch

Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) under grant agreements PZ00P1_180128 and TMSGI1_211627 and by the Forskningsrådet om Hälsa, Arbetsliv och Välfärd (Forte) under grant agreement 2016-0709. Earlier versions of this study were presented at the University of Berne, the University of Antwerp, the Annual Conference of the European Consortium for Sociological Research, and the conference of the Akademie für Soziologie in 2021 as well as the Research Committee 28 of the International Sociological Association conference in London in 2022. I thank these participants as well as my colleagues at the University of Lausanne and Stockholm University for their comments and suggestions. I am particularly grateful for detailed suggestions from Andreas Diemer, Jörg Dollmann, Chaïm LaRoi, and Richard Nennstiel. This paper uses data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS): Starting Cohort Adults doi:10.5157/NEPS:SC6:11.1.0). From 2008 to 2013, NEPS data were collected as part of the Framework Program for the Promotion of Empirical Educational Research funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). As of 2014, NEPS has been carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) at the University of Bamberg in cooperation with a nationwide network. The SOEP data were collected by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW).

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Grätz, Michael. 2023. “Does Schooling Affect Socioeconomic Inequalities in Educational Attainment? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Germany.” Sociological Science 10: 880–902.
  • Received: May 20, 2023
  • Accepted: September 10, 2023
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Jeremy Freese
  • DOI: 10.15195/v10.a31


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Life-Course Differences in Occupational Mobility Between Vocationally and Generally Trained Workers in Germany

By on November 14, 2023 in Articles

Viktor Decker, Thijs Bol, Hanno Kruse

Sociological Science November 14, 2023
10.15195/v10.a30

Abstract

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Vocational education is considered beneficial to young workers entering the labor market but disadvantageous late in their careers. Many studies assume that late-career disadvantages stem from lower levels of occupational mobility, but do not explicitly study this mechanism. This study is the first to empirically assess whether and to what extent occupational mobility differs between workers with a general education and those with vocational training and to examine how these differences develop over workers’ life courses. Using multilevel linear probability models on panel data spanning 36 years of labor market participation in Germany, we find that vocationally educated workers are less mobile, but only in the first half of their careers. In the second half, mobility rates for vocationally and generally trained workers converge. Our findings support earlier research that links vocational education to less turbulent early careers. Yet, they do not support the notion of late-career mobility disparities between workers with different types of training. Implications for research on education-based differences in career outcomes are discussed.
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Viktor Decker: Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam
E-mail: v.v.decker@uva.nl

Thijs Bol: Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam
E-mail: t.bol@uva.nl

Hanno Kruse: Institute of Political Science and Sociology, University of Bonn
E-mail: hkruse@uni-bonn.de

Acknowledgements: The research was supported by the ERC starting grant From School to Career: Towards A Career Perspective on the Labor Market Returns to Education (ID: 950189). Previous versions of this article were presented at the ISA RC28 conference 2022 at London School of Economics, the ECSR annual conference 2022 at University of Amsterdam, and at multiple events organized by the Dutch Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Decker, Viktor, Thijs Bol, and Hanno Kruse. 2023. “Life-Course Differences in Occupational Mobility Between Vocationally and Generally Trained Workers in Germany.” Sociological Science 10: 857-879.
  • Received: May 3, 2023
  • Accepted: May 26, 2023
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Richard Breen
  • DOI: 10.15195/v10.a30


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There's More in the Data! Using Month-Specific Information to Estimate Changes Before and After Major Life Events

By on November 9, 2023 in Articles

Ansgar Hudde, Marita Jacob

Sociological Science November 9, 2023
10.15195/v10.a29

Abstract

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Sociological research is increasingly using survey panel data to examine changes in diverse outcomes over life course events. Most of these studies have one striking similarity: they analyze changes between yearly time intervals. In this article, we present a simple but effective method to model such trajectories more precisely using available data. The approach exploits month-specific information regarding interview and life event dates. Using fixed effects regression models, we calculate monthly dummy estimates around life events and then run nonparametric smoothing to create smoothed monthly estimates. We test the approach using Monte Carlo simulations and Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) data. Monte Carlo simulations show that the newly proposed smoothed monthly estimates outperform yearly dummy estimates, especially when there is rapid change or discontinuities in trends at the event. In the real data analyses, the novel approach reports an amplitude of change that is roughly twice as large as the yearly estimates showed. It also reveals a discontinuity in trajectories at bereavement, but not at childbirth; and remarkable gender differences. Our proposed method can be applied to several available data sets and a variety of outcomes and life events. Thus, for research on changes around life events, it serves as a powerful new tool in the researcher’s toolbox.
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Ansgar Hudde: University of Cologne, Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, Germany
E-mail: hudde@wiso.uni-koeln.de

Marita Jacob: University of Cologne, Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, Germany
E-mail: marita.jacob@uni-koeln.de

Acknowledgements: Replication files are available here: https://osf.io/rhd8y/.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Hudde, Ansgar, and Marita Jacob. 2023. “There’s More in the Data! Using Month-Specific Information to Estimate Changes Before and After Major Life Events.” Sociological Science 10: 830-856.
  • Received: June 5, 2023
  • Accepted: July 27, 2023
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Vida Maralani
  • DOI: 10.15195/v10.a29


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Feasible Peer Effects: Experimental Evidence for Deskmate Effects on Educational Achievement and Inequality

By on November 6, 2023 in Articles

Tamás Keller, Felix Elwert

Sociological Science November 6, 2023
10.15195/v10.a28

Abstract

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Schools routinely employ seating charts to influence educational outcomes. Dependable evidence for the causal effects of seating charts on students’ achievement levels and inequality, however, is scarce. We executed a large pre-registered field experiment to estimate causal peer effects on students’ test scores and grades by randomizing the seating charts of 195 classrooms (N=3,365 students). We found that neither sitting next to a deskmate with higher prior achievement nor sitting next to a female deskmate affected learning outcomes on average. However, we also found that sitting next to the highest-achieving deskmates improved the educational outcomes of the lowest-achieving students; and sitting next to the lowest-achieving deskmates lowered the educational outcomes of the highest-achieving students. Therefore, compared to random seating charts, achievement-discordant seating charts would decrease inequality; whereas achievement concordant seating charts would increase inequality. We discuss policy implications.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Tamás Keller: HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences, Computational Social Science – Research Center for Educational and Network Studies, Budapest, Hungary HUN-REN Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Institute of Economics, Budapest, Hungary. TÁRKI Social Research Institute, Budapest, Hungary
E-mail: keller.tamas@tk.hu

Felix Elwert: Department of Sociology & Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, University of Wisconsin-Madison
E-mail: elwert@wisc.edu

Acknowledgements: The authors thank Carlo Barone, Dorottya Baross, Steven Durlauf, Edina Gábor, Eric Grodsky, Judit Kerek, Gábor Kertesi, Gábor Kézdi, Andreas Kotsadam, Xinran Li, Károly Takács, Jeffrey Smith, and audiences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Chicago, ISA RC28 Spring Meeting in Frankfurt am Main, the Annual Meeting of the International Network of Analytical Sociologists (INAS) in St. Petersburg, the Meeting of the Economics of Education Association (AEDE) in Las Palmas, the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, and the European Research Network on Transitions in Youth (TiY) in Mannheim for valuable discussions. This research was funded by grants from the Hungarian National Research, Development, and Innovation Office (NKFIH), grant number K-135766; a János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, #BO/00569/21/9; the New National Excellence Program of the Ministry for Culture and Innovation, #ÚNKP- 23-5-CORVINUS-149; and a Romnes Fellowship and a Vilas Midcareer Faculty Award, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Direct correspondence to Tamás Keller (keller.tamas@tk.hu) and Felix Elwert (elwert@wisc.edu).

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Keller, Tamás, and Felix Elwert. 2023. “Feasible Peer Effects: Experimental Evidence for Deskmate Effects on Educational Achievement and Inequality” Sociological Science 7: 806-829.
  • Received: July 12, 2023
  • Accepted: May 2, 2023
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Peter Bearman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v10.a28


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The Refugee Advantage: English-Language Attainment in the Early Twentieth Century

By on November 3, 2023 in Articles

Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan, Peter Catron, Dylan Connor, Rob Voigt

Sociological Science November 3, 2023
10.15195/v10.a27

Abstract

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The United States has admitted more than 3 million refugees since 1980 through official refugee resettlement programs. Scholars attribute the success of refugee groups to governmental programs on assimilation and integration. Before 1948, however, refugees arrived without formal selection processes or federal support. We examine the integration of historical refugees using a large archive of recorded oral history interviews to understand linguistic attainment of migrants who arrived in the early twentieth century. Using fine-grained measures of vocabulary, syntax and accented speech, we find that refugee migrants achieved a greater depth of English vocabulary than did economic/family migrants, a finding that holds even when comparing migrants from the same country of origin or religious group. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that refugees had greater exposure to English or more incentive to learn, due to the conditions of their arrival and their inability to immediately return to their origin country.
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Ran Abramitzky: Department of Economics, Stanford University and National Bureau of Economic Research
E-mail: ranabr@stanford.edu

Leah Boustan: Department of Economics, Princeton University and National Bureau of Economic Research
E-mail: lboustan@princeton.edu

Peter Catron: Department of Sociology, University of Washington
E-mail: catron@uw.edu

Dylan Connor: School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University
E-mail: d.c@asu.edu

Rob Voigt: Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University
E-mail: robvoigt@northwestern.edu

Acknowledgements: We acknowledge the excellent research assistance of Victoria Angelova, Harriet Brookes Gray, Sarah Frick, Myera Rashid, and Noah Simon. Sima Biondi, Alicia Liu, Lori Mitrano, Lorenzo Rosas, Antigone Xenopoulos and Adam Zhang helped to collect variables from the oral history interviews. Jared Grogan, Bailey Palmer and James Reeves coded the interviews for accented speech. Tom Zohar oversaw audio transcription of missing transcripts. We appreciate suggestions from audiences at Universitat Automoma de Barcelona, UC-Berkeley, European Social Science History Association, Harvard, University of Nottingham, Pompeu Fabra, University of Chicago, and University College, London. All data and replication files may be found here: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/HMMGJ5

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Abramitzky et al. 2023. “The Refugee Advantage: English-Language Attainment in the Early Twentieth Century.” Sociological Science 10: 769-805.
  • Received: June 23, 2023
  • Accepted: August 23, 2023
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Filiz Garip
  • DOI: 10.15195/v10.a27


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Cross-Group Differences in Age, Period, and Cohort Effects: A Bounding Approach to the Gender Wage Gap

By on October 31, 2023 in Articles

Ohjae Gowen, Ethan Fosse, Christopher Winship

Sociological Science October 31, 2023
10.15195/v10.a26

Abstract

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For decades, researchers have sought to understand the separate contributions of age, period, and cohort (APC) on a wide range of outcomes. However, a major challenge in these efforts is the linear dependence among the three time scales. Previous methods have been plagued by either arbitrary assumptions or extreme sensitivity to small variations in model specification. In this article, we present an alternative method that achieves partial identification by leveraging additional information about subpopulations (or strata) such as race, gender, and social class. Our first goal is to introduce the cross-strata linearized APC (CSL-APC) model, a re-parameterization of the traditional APC model that focuses on cross-group variations in effects instead of overall effects. Similar to the traditional model, the linear cross-strata APC effects are not identified. The second goal is to show how Fosse and Winship’s (2019) bounding approach can be used to address the identification problem of the CSL-APC model, allowing one to partially identify cross-group differences in effects. This approach often involves weaker assumptions than previously used techniques and, in some cases, can lead to highly informative bounds. To illustrate our method, we examine differences in temporal effects on wages between men and women in the United States.
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Ohjae Gowen: Department of Sociology, Harvard University
E-mail: ohjaegowen@g.harvard.edu

Ethan Fosse: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
E-mail: ethan.fosse@utoronto.ca

Christopher Winship: Department of Sociology, Harvard University
E-mail: cwinship@wjh.harvard.edu

Acknowledgements: The authors thank Derick S. Baum for his invaluable assistance in the early stages of the analysis. This article also benefited from a presentation at the 2023 annual meeting of the Population Association of America, New Orleans, LA.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Gowen, Ohjae, Ethan Fosse, and Christopher Winship. 2023. “Cross-Group Differences in Age, Period, and Cohort Effects: A Bounding Approach to the Gender Wage Gap.” Sociological Science 10: 731-768.
  • Received: February 9, 2023
  • Accepted: March 13, 2023
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Richard Breen
  • DOI: 10.15195/v10.a26


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Institutional Survival under Extreme State Repression and Subsequent Revival

By on October 24, 2023 in Articles

Hongwei Xu, Litao Zhao

Sociological Science October 24, 2023
10.15195/v10.a25

Abstract

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This study examines institutional survival under conditions of extreme state repression. We argue that institutional values under these onditions become dormant in small “safe” social spaces such as families and small close-knit social groups. As state repression becomes increasingly violent, the suppressed groups within those spaces become more resilient in preserving “deviant” values and mitigating the negative long-term impact of state violence on institutional revival. We examine the extent to which pre-1949 entrepreneurial families served as institutional carriers for private entrepreneurship in the Mao era (1949-1978) of China, especially in the context of the political violence of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and shaped individuals’ entry into private entrepreneurship in the post-1978 reform era. We find that entrepreneurial transmission was suppressed at the family level by communist repression. Where more severe political violence occurred, pre-1949 entrepreneurial families could better mitigate the deterrent effect on institutional revival of the number of deaths that occurred locally during the Cultural Revolution. Stigmatized pre-1949 entrepreneurial families—those with “bad” class origins—mitigated the effects better than their nonstigmatized counterparts. We test to control for public sector job opportunities at the individual and municipal levels and find that these opportunities are unlikely to drive our results.
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Hongwei Xu: Odette School of Business, University of Windsor
E-mail: hongwei.xu@uwindsor.ca

Litao Zhao: East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore
E-mail: eaizlt@nus.edu.sg

Acknowledgements: We thank Donald Treiman and Andrew Walder for making publicly available their data sets on China. We are also grateful to Philip Anderson, Glenn Carroll, Zhi Huang, Martin Ruef, Chunlei Wang, and Hong Zhang for providing helpful suggestions on earlier drafts.

  • Citation: Xu, Hongwei, and Litao Zhao. 2023. “Institutional Survival under Extreme State Repression and Subsequent Revival.” Sociological Science 10: 694-730.
  • Received: February 24, 2023
  • Accepted: March 13, 2023
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Andreas Wimmer
  • DOI: 10.15195/v10.a25


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