RC28’s Contributions to
Knowledge
Comment’s on Mike Hout’s perspective on
“What We Have Learned”
Thomas A. DiPrete
Duke University
Mike’s List of Findings
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Findings Re “2nd” & “3rd” Generation of
Intergenerational Mobility Research
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The Treiman constant: invariance of prestige.
Common Social Fluidity, with some variance
in strength of association.
Education is the Main Factor in Intergenerational
Mobility.
Trends in IGM refute convergence prediction of
modernization theory
Class Effects on Education vary across Educational
Transitions.
Mike’s List of Findings, continued
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Gender.
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Educational Process.
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Occupational Distributions are Gendered.
Trends in Educational Stratification Favor
Women.
Tracking increases the variance of educational
outcomes.
School-to-Work Transitions are Conditioned
by Institutions.
My Characterization of Mike’s List
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Very Good Stuff.
Heavy on Intergenerational Mobility.
Light on “4th Generation” Work (Kerckhoff,
Ganzeboom & Treiman).
Heavy on research that dominated the RC28 agenda
in the 1970s and 1980s. Light on research that has
become an increasingly important part of the RC28
agenda in the 1990s and post-2000.
Awareness of this Trend? An Anecdote
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Aage Sørensen, (AJS, 2000), argued that
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“class as life conditions” is the dominant conception in empirical
sociology
“class as life conditions” and “class as exploitation” are the two
dominant conceptions of class in theoretical work.
My 2001 RC28 paper (AJS, forthcoming), which called for a
broader approach to social mobility based on household
instead of individual measures of “life conditions,” used life
course mobility as the primarily illustration for this critique.
An offshoot of this work is forthcoming in a jointly published
issue of Current Sociology and Sociologie et Societé.
Noteworthy: one reviewer from CS/SS asserted that “the vast
majority of sociological research on social mobility is devoted
to intergenerational mobility” and urged a statement at the
start of the paper as to why the sociological reader should be
concerned about life course/career mobility.
So….New Footnote in My Paper
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Footnote: A search of indexed items in Sociological
Abstracts since 1990
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found 245 items with keywords/words in Abstract/Title
that included {“occupational” or “class”} and
{“mobility”} and {“intergenerational”}….
In contrast, there were 295 items with keywords/words
{“occupational” or “class”} and {“mobility”} and
{“career” or “intragenerational” or “life course”} and
{NOT “intergenerational”}
The count rises to 332 if the {NOT “intergenerational”}
condition is removed from the search.
Trends in the Research of RC28
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My student, Yunus Kaya, is creating a database of RC28
research from 1983 (or earlier: HELP if you have earlier
data!) to the present (1579 entries to date)
We are coding the kind of work done by RC28 members to
study trends.
Simple Illustration: Highlight references to
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The Life Course
Labor Markets & School to Work
Welfare States
Income/Wages/Earnings
Inequality/Povertyd
Gender
Compare presentations in 1983 (3 pages worth) with the first
three pages of presentations from 2001.
Titles for selected years : 1983
What theories of Social inequality really Explain.
Social mobility and Class Formation: On the Renewal of a Tradition in sociological
inquiry.
Changes in the Status Attainment model
The Concept of Social Closure in Class Analysis. Some examples from Italian
Experience.
Three Plastic laws of oligarchy
Social Mobility as a Political Safety Valve.
Status Groups in Hungary.
Jordanian and Palestanian systems of Stratification: The Impact of External Events.
The Polish Intelligentsia in Exile.
An ontological Model of Class Counsciousness: Confirmatory Likelihood factor
Analysis.
Anxiety and Social Stratification in Poland.
Long Crawl, from Common Man to Academic man in Denmark
Education for Self Recruitment: A Nigerian case Study.
The Treatment of Non-Working parents in Schoolcareer-research.
Temporal Changes in the Skill Levels of Work in the Netherlands 1960-1977.
Trends in Educational Stratification in Canada and The US.
How Does structure Constrain Mobility? Couting the ways: Structural Change and
Mobility in Hungary: 1938-1973.
Determining Mobility Effects: Re-examined.
Social Mobility Measures for Cross-national Comparisions.
Matrix Representation of Structural and Circulation Mobility
A Scale of Occupational Stratification in Modern Society.
1983, p. 1
Societal Transformations and Institutionalization of the life course
Class Structure ans Career Mobility of Men in three in Advanced Societies. A
Comparision of Austria, France and The United States.
A Multidimensional Analysis of Longitudinal Data: Methodological perspectives and
Substantive Results.
A comparision of Intergenerational Mobility between 1965-1970 in France and West
Germany.
A Comparative Analysis of Status Attainment in Israel, Japan and The US.
Comparing Social Mobility in Hungary and Netherlands
Changes in Social Mobility in Two Semi-Peripheral Societies: A Hungarian- Irish
Comparision.
Social Mobility Case of American Exceptionalism
Alternatives to Conspiracy Theory: Simulating residential and Occupational
Segregation
The Social Mobility of Norwegian Women.
Industrial Differentiation and Occupational Complexity: Race and Sex Difference
Dutch Calvinists and Roman Catholics, Their Mobility in the Occupational Hierarchy.
Occupational Mobility in the Netherlands in 1954 and 1977.
Paterns of Marriage and the Openness of Society: the Connection Between the
Education of (Marriage) Partners in the Netherlands in 1959, 1971 and 1977
The Recruitment of Directors of the Largest Dutch Firms.
Class, Status and Income Inequality.
Differentiation of Living Conditions and of the Way of Life in Hungary by Social
Classes and Strata.
Untouchables and Social Mobility
A Model of Social Status Changes Resulting from Intergenerational Mobility
1983, p. 2
1983, p. 3
Inheritance as a second option. Birth order and Social Mobility in Two irish
Populations.
Unfulfilled Systematic Functions of Social Mobility: The case of Poland.
The Withering away of Class and status.
The Occupations of the Welfare State.
Investigation of Social Background for Students in Higher education by Use of
register Information.
Ownership and Classes in Max Weber's Sociology.
On the way from the Agricultural to Industrial and Classless Society
Alineation and social class
Friedrich von Vieser on Power and Class formation. Uncocering a socialogical pioneer
Titles for selected years : 2001
Globalisation and the Great U-turn: Income Inequality Trends in Sixteen OECD
Countries
Self-employment Dynamics in Advanced Economies
Rising Income Inequality and the Role of the Welfare State
Second Chance Education and Inequalities in Israel
Property Privatisation and Adaptation of the Russian Population to Market
Globalisation, Recommodification and Social Stratification: Changing Patterns of
Early Career in Italy
Professional Gender Segregation in Lithuania in a Period of Transition
Trends in Social Mobility, 1970-2000
DECOMPOSING CHANGE IN SOCIAL FLUIDITY: SWEDEN, 1976-19
Measuring Gender Segregation and Inequality: an Integrated Approach
Overeducation and Human Capital Endowments - The Role of School Achievement
and Vocational Training Quality
The Educational Achievement of Immigrant and Native-born Students: A Comparative
Analysis of Western Industrialised Societies
Labour Market Opportunities and Women's Employment Exit and Re-entry
Education and Class Membership Fluctuations by Cohorts in France and the USA
(1960-2000)
States, Markets, and Fertility: Shifting the Sexual Division of Labor
Parental Resources in Different Stages of the Educational Career in the Netherlands:
Income, Beaux Arts Participation or Reading Behaviour?
Labour market conditions at labour market entry and occupational careers
Life Chances, Life Course Risks, and Adjustment Strategies: toward an Expanded
Agenda for Mobility Research
Does the Household Type Matter? The Case of Hungarian Income Distribution during
the Socio-economic Transformation
2001, p. 1
Has the Dutch nobility retained its social relevance during the 20th century?
The Theory for Stratification Analysis in Russia
The New Geography of World Income Inequality
The Virtues of Employment Protection: Unemployment Incidence in the United States
and West Germany
Participation in High Culture: the Effects of Family and School from Adolescence to
Adulthood
Recent Trends in Intergenerational Occupational Class Mobility: Men and Women in
the Netherlands 1970-1999
The Welfare State, Gender Stratification and the Home: a Cross-national Study of the
Domestic Division of Labour
School to Work in Post-war Russia: Breakdown of Tight Institutional Linkage
Temporary Employment: Chance or Risk? An Analysis of the Working Careers of
Employees with Fixed-term Contracts
Who are the Losers? Differential Effects of Pension Privatisation
"Windows of Opportunity" in the East German Labour Market after 1989: Have they
Been the Same for the Old and the Young?
Transition to Adulthood in Great Britain and the Process of Globalisation
Is Politics Crowded Out? The Evolution of Inequality in the 1980s and 1990s
Linguistic Capital: Language as a Socio-economic Resource among Minority Women
in Turkey
Changes in the Labour Market Patterns during the Nineties: a Cross-national
Comparative View
Constructing the Beneficiaries as Strangers: Understanding Neo-liberal Welfare
Reforms in New Zealand
Cohorts and Competition from School to Work in the Context of Economic and
Demographic Change
Educational Progress for African Americans and Latinos in the United States from the
2001, p. 2
1950s to the 1990s: the Interaction of Ancestry and Class
Self-employment Trajectories in Japan: Entry into and Exit from Self- employment
Education and Occupational Attainment: What do Employers Really See as Merit?
Regional Poverty and Income Inequality in the European Union: Evidence from the
Luxembourg Income Study
Socio-economic Status and the Role of Kinship in Social Networks
The New and Old Politics of Welfare State Retrenchment: a Comparative Analysis of
Cutbacks in Social Rights in Eighteen Countries 1980-1995.
Self-employment among Israeli Women, Trends and Advantages 1970-1995
Flow of Persons among Positions under Radical Changes in the Labour Market
Global Competition, Labour Market Restructuring and Welfare Retrenchment: the
Transition into the Labour Market in Germany
Recent Trends in Intergenerational Occupational Class Mobility: Men and Women in
the Netherlands 1970-1999
Structural and Individual Determinants of Poverty among Jews and Arabs in Israel
Historical Changes in Attitudes Toward State Egalitarian Policies: the Trajectory of
Change in Hungary and Poland
Decline of the Social
Economic Reform, the Turn to Globalisation, and Impacts on the Labour Market and
Stratification in Israel
Social Mobility in Africa: Trends and Determinants
Trends in Income Instability in the U.S. and Germany
Structural Economic Change and Advantage in the Labour Market: the Stratification
Effects of Economic Change
On the Adjusted Rate of Return to Women's University Education: a Preliminary
Study of OECD Countries
Educational Expansion and Inequality in Korea
2001, p. 3
4th Generation Generalizations: Some
Examples
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Inequality
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The long-term trend in within-nation income inequality is not
monotonic. Inequality rises with urbanization and then falls, though
in recent years this decline has been reversed in liberal marketoriented societies.
Inequality and poverty rates are greater in liberal welfare states than
in social democratic welfare states, with conservative and
Mediterranean welfare states in the middle.
Inequality is growing faster in liberal market-oriented industrial
societies than in societies with strong unions, and
centralized/coordinated wage-setting mechanisms.
Most of the world’s inequality is between-nation. This component of
total inequality experienced long-term growth, but is no longer
growing.
Life Course Mobility
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The level of career occupational mobility is an inverse function of state
licensing and credentialing of occupations.
The life course earnings turbulence of women is lower in societies whose
institutional arrangements facilitate the combining of work and
childbearing.
Turbulence in the life conditions of women is positively related to
institutional arrangements that facilitate divorce.
The impact of divorce on men’s life course income turbulence depends on
male-female earnings differences, national institutions that facilitate the
combining of work and childbearing, national-level fertility rates, and
social institutions that enforce legal obligations on men to pay child
support.
Turbulence in life conditions is lower in societies with more extensive
social insurance programs, more progressive tax systems, and more
compressed wage distributions.
Intergenerational Mobility – beyond
B&D or the 3rd generation
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Poverty has independent effects on status attainment,
affecting educational achievement and the income and
poverty chances of the next generation.
At least in some societies, wealth appears to have an
independent effect on mobility, after controlling for SES and
education. The extent to which wealth effects are distinct
from poverty effects are not yet well understood.
Social capital has universally positive effects on mobility.
The extent to which social capital is a mediator (and thus
reproducer) of origin class or an independent factor (and thus
an engine of social mobility is not yet known. Partial
evidence suggests that the effects of social capital on
attainment varies with societal institutions (cf. Treiman and
Yip).
Intergenerational Mobility, cont.
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Household structure affects status attainment,
primarily through its impacts on the amount of
family socioeconomic resources available to any
particular child. HH structure effects have been
confirmed in many countries, though the direction of
their effects is not uniform
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E.g., in African countries, female headship appears to be
associated with greater, not fewer educational
opportunities for children.
E.g., the negative effect of siblings on attainment is not
present many developing countries.
Intergenerational Mobility, 4th
generation, continued
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Neighborhood context, school context, and labor market
context have been shown in innumerable studies to affect
mobility, both intergenerationally and over the life course.
The size of these contextual effects on intergenerational
mobility are generally smaller than are the effects of family of
origin.
Welfare state structures and national wage-setting
mechanisms affect the occupational distribution; Nationspecific changes in these institutions will therefore affect
absolute rates of mobility, though the distribution of these
effects between intergenerational and career mobility are
unclear.
Concept and Measurement
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Increases in the labor force participation, and increased
heterogeneity and instability of family forms, are
undermining one of the principal justifications for our
traditional, individual-level occupation-based measures,
namely that they accurately and adequately (and comparably
across societies) measure the “life conditions” and changes in
life conditions of individuals.
Because educational systems are more variable across nations
than is the division of labor, metrics for comparative
educational research are more problematic than metrics for
comparative research on occupational or class mobility.
Conclusions
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2nd & 3rd generation intergenerational mobility
research were virtually “owned” by the RC28.
The broader stratification agenda, including
questions about inequality, poverty, & life course
mobility, and especially including the “4th
generation” agenda as applied to these issues, is not
“owned” by the RC28, even though we make
substantial contributions to these topics. This creates
both competition and opportunities for growth. May
both of these facts contribute positively to the quality
and quantity of RC28 research on these topics.
Postscript
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“Trends in Educational Stratification Favor Women”
(Mike Hout’s Empirical Generalization #5)
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“The descriptive result is widely appreciated. The RC has
not kept up with this trend however, and few members
have endeavored to explain it.” (Hout 2003, p. 12)
Attend “Educational Stratification II” (Mon, 3-5pm)
and listen to Claudia Buchmann’s presentation on
“Do Rises in Parental Resources Affect the Growing
Female Advantage in U.S. Higher Education?” for
evidence that RC28 members are indeed
endeavoring to explain this trend.