Does more education lower the barriers to social mobility? An analysis of three birth cohorts during a period of educational expansion in Brazil

The articles published in this issue of the Journal help advance the debate on market reform in former socialist states. In our comment, besides dealing with data analysis issues, we suggest several ways to improve the level of debate about substantive issues. These suggestions include more attention to politics, including path dependence, and more attention to middle-level generalizations from other developing market societies.

Despite repeated attempts to integrate competing perspectives (Szelenyi and Kostello 1996; Nee and Matthews 1996), the ongoing market transition debate has shown no signs of resolution. Instead, the 1996 AJS market transition symposium seems to have created more controversy than it settled (Nee 1996; Xie and Hannum 1996; Oberschall 1996; Parish and Michelson 1996; Walder 1996; Fligstein 1996; Szelenyi and Kostello 1996). And subsequent studies continue to reach nearly opposite conclusions (cf. Bian and Logan 1996; Gerber and Hout 1998; with Brainerd 1998; Nee and Cao, in press). When arguments become polarized, it often signals that divisions are falsely drawn (Bates 1997). Although originally made in another context, this observation is applicable here. As principals in this lively debate, we believe that clarification and reevaluation are essential for moving toward a reconciliation of competing viewpoints. In this comment we therefore identify the central issues in the controversy and provide an overall assessment of existing empirical evidence

Educational Inequality, Homogamy, and Status Exchange in Black‐White Intermarriage: A Comment on Rosenfeld

The United States experienced a period of rapid higher education expansion between the mid-1940s and mid-1970s. Although this expansion likely improved the health of people able to take advantage of new education opportunities, expansion may have also intensified health inequalities between college-educated and non-college-educated people (1) through the compositional change in the relative (dis)advantage of these groups, (2) through the displacement of non-college-educated people in a more competitive post-expansion labor market, and (3) by increasing health returns to a college degree. Our analyses, rooted in a counterfactual perspective, draw on data from the Health and Retirement Study that spans birth cohorts who came of age before and after the period of expansion, allowing us to differentiate people who earned a degree because of expansion but would not otherwise (conditional-earners) from people who would or would not have earned a degree regardless of expansion (always-earners and never-earners, respectively). Comparing changes in the health of these three groups before and after education expansion permits us to individually evaluate how compositional change, displacement, and increasing returns to education exacerbated health inequalities. Our findings suggest that education expansion improved the health of conditional-earners and magnified health inequalities through the mechanism of displacement.

This article studies to what extent societal processes such as educational expansion, economic modernisation and business cycles have affected the returns to educational certificates of women and men entering the labour market in West Germany. Using longitudinal data, long-term changes in cohort- and period-specific effects on socio-economic status attainment at entry into the labour market are investigated between 1945 and 2008. Analyses demonstrate that the entrants' average socio-economic prestige scores have clearly risen in the process of modernisation. Despite educational expansion, increasing skill demands for highly qualified graduates resulted in rising rates of returns for the most highly educated entrants across birth cohorts. While educational expansion and economic modernisation have boosted socio-economic returns at entry into the labour market for women from all educational levels, it has not been the case for men with the lowest levels of education. Both educational expansion and rising skill requirements of occupations led to an increasing polarisation of inequality between tertiary educated labour-market entrants and less-qualified school leavers. Educational expansion in West Germany has therefore never exceeded the occupational skill demands at entry into the labour market.

Previous articleNext article No AccessCommentary and DebateComment: An Endorsement of Exchange Theory in Mate Selection1Aaron Gullickson and Vincent Kang FuAaron GullicksonUniversity of Oregon Search for more articles by this author and Vincent Kang FuUniversity of Utah Search for more articles by this author University of OregonUniversity of UtahPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 115, Number 4January 2010 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/649049 Views: 396Total views on this site Citations: 33Citations are reported from Crossref Permission to reprint this essay may be obtained only from the author.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Zhuqing Duan, Xiaoyi Jin, Jiaxuan Teng Typological Features and Determinants of Men’s Marriage Expenses in Rural China: Evidence from a Village-Level Survey, Sustainability 14, no.1414 (Jul 2022): 8666.https://doi.org/10.3390/su14148666Victor Karandashev Models of Rational Love, (Sep 2022): 305–335.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05343-6_8Yu Xie and Hao Dong A New Methodological Framework for Studying Status Exchange in Marriage, American Journal of Sociology 126, no.55 (May 2021): 1179–1219.https://doi.org/10.1086/713927Aaron Gullickson A counterfactual choice approach to the study of partner selection, Demographic Research 44 (Mar 2021): 513–536.https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2021.44.22Suzanne Model Patterns of Black–White Partnership: Black Ethnics and African Americans Compared, Journal of Marriage and Family 6 (May 2020).https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12687Danny Elworth Malone Effects of Educational and Metropolitan Context on U.S. Black Intermarriage, (Apr 2020): 167–186.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35079-6_12Mirko K. Braack, Nadja Milewski A different perspective on exogamy: Are non-migrant partners in mixed unions more liberal in their attitudes toward gender, family, and religion than other natives?, Zeitschrift für Familienforschung 31, no.3-20193-2019 (Dec 2019): 361–386.https://doi.org/10.3224/zff.v31i3.06Elizabeth Aura McClintock, Shannon Zoe Sheehan Race, Gender, and Social Exchange in Young Adult Unions, Sociological Spectrum 39, no.22 (May 2019): 71–92.https://doi.org/10.1080/02732173.2019.1608340Omar Shahabudin McDoom Inequality, ethnicity, and status in a ranked society: Intermarriage in Mindanao, the Philippines, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 59 (Feb 2019): 71–80.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2018.11.007Daniel T. Lichter, Zhenchao Qian The Study of Assortative Mating: Theory, Data, and Analysis, (Sep 2018): 303–337.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93227-9_13Jenifer L. Bratter, Ellen M. Whitehead Ties That Bind? Comparing Kin Support Availability for Mothers of Mixed‐Race and Monoracial Infants, Journal of Marriage and Family 80, no.44 (Apr 2018): 951–962.https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12485Zhenchao Qian, Daniel T. Lichter Marriage Markets and Intermarriage: Exchange in First Marriages and Remarriages, Demography 55, no.33 (Apr 2018): 849–875.https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0671-xGina Potarca, Laura Bernardi Educational Sorting in Mixed Marriages in Switzerland, Swiss Journal of Sociology 43, no.33 (Dec 2017): 515–542.https://doi.org/10.1515/sjs-2017-0026Yue Qian, Zhenchao Qian Assortative Mating by Education and Hukou in Shanghai, Chinese Sociological Review 49, no.33 (Mar 2017): 239–262.https://doi.org/10.1080/21620555.2017.1288066Yue Qian Gender Asymmetry in Educational and Income Assortative Marriage, Journal of Marriage and Family 79, no.22 (Sep 2016): 318–336.https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12372Florencia Torche, Peter Rich Declining Racial Stratification in Marriage Choices? Trends in Black/White Status Exchange in the United States, 1980 to 2010, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 3, no.11 (Jul 2016): 31–49.https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649216648464Christine Schwartz, Zhen Zeng, Yu Xie Marrying Up by Marrying Down: Status Exchange between Social Origin and Education in the United States, Sociological Science 3 (Jan 2016): 1003–1027.https://doi.org/10.15195/v3.a44Dan Rodríguez-García Intermarriage and Integration Revisited, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 662, no.11 (Oct 2015): 8–36.https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716215601397Aloysius Siow Testing Becker’s Theory of Positive Assortative Matching, Journal of Labor Economics 33, no.22 (Jun 2015): 409–441.https://doi.org/10.1086/678496Delia Furtado Ethnic Intermarriage, (Jan 2015): 118–122.https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.31097-2Aloysius Siow Assortative Mating in the Marriage Market, (Jan 2015): 100–107.https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.31100-XElizabeth Aura McClintock Beauty and Status, American Sociological Review 79, no.44 (Jun 2014): 575–604.https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122414536391Aaron Gullickson, Florencia Torche Patterns of Racial and Educational Assortative Mating in Brazil, Demography 51, no.33 (May 2014): 835–856.https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-014-0300-2Christine R. Schwartz Trends and Variation in Assortative Mating: Causes and Consequences, Annual Review of Sociology 39, no.11 (Jul 2013): 451–470.https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-071312-145544Ken-Hou Lin and Jennifer Lundquist Mate Selection in Cyberspace: The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Education, American Journal of Sociology 119, no.11 (Jul 2015): 183–215.https://doi.org/10.1086/673129Richard Wright, Steven Holloway, Mark Ellis Gender and the Neighborhood Location of Mixed-Race Couples, Demography 50, no.22 (Oct 2012): 393–420.https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-012-0158-0Feng Hou, John Myles Interracial marriage and status-caste exchange in Canada and the United States, Ethnic and Racial Studies 36, no.11 (Jan 2013): 75–96.https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2011.634505M. Kalmijn The Educational Gradient in Intermarriage: A Comparative Analysis of Immigrant Groups in the United States, Social Forces 91, no.22 (Nov 2012): 453–476.https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sos128Carrie Yodanis, Sean Lauer, Risako Ota Interethnic Romantic Relationships: Enacting Affiliative Ethnic Identities, Journal of Marriage and Family 74, no.55 (Sep 2012): 1021–1037.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2012.01005.xJ. Erola, J. Harkonen, J. Dronkers More Careful or Less Marriageable? Parental Divorce, Spouse Selection and Entry into Marriage, Social Forces 90, no.44 (Jun 2012): 1323–1345.https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sos073Kate H. Choi, Marta Tienda, Deborah Cobb-Clark, Mathias Sinning Immigration and status exchange in Australia and the United States, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 30, no.11 (Mar 2012): 49–62.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2011.08.002Kate Choi, Marta Tienda, Deborah A. Cobb-Clark, Mathias Sinning Immigration and Status Exchange in Australia and the United States, SSRN Electronic Journal (Jan 2011).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1855925Barbara S. Okun, Orna Khait-Marelly The impact of intermarriage on ethnic stratification: Jews in Israel, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 28, no.44 (Dec 2010): 375–394.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2010.07.003

Introducing an employment variable with five levels of educational attainment per capita and employing inequality decomposition, this study addresses three questions. How does labour force vary by education and provinces? How does labour force utilization vary by education and provinces? What are the potential causes of differences? We find that the no‐primary‐education group is more endowed in less‐developed provinces and allocated most unequally among education groups across provinces, despite past universal primary education policies. The senior‐secondary‐education group with the largest labour share is a growing concern due to the lower employment rate and largest interprovincial inequality.

Scholars have consistently found that inequalities in educational attainment are most pronounced along social origin and gender dimensions, but urban–rural inequalities have also been evident in recent years. A spatial gradient in educational attainment reflects how rural students are consistently less likely to gain higher education (HE) credentials than their urban peers. By drawing on full-population administrative data on the Norwegian birth cohorts from 1965 to 1989 (n = 1,419,406), followed from age 16 to 30, this article analyses how urban–rural differences in HE have changed over the last 25 years, and furthermore, whether urban–rural disparities have developed in distinct ways based on students’ social origin and gender. The results show that urban–rural disparities in higher educational attainment have become more pronounced for recent birth cohorts and particularly evident for post-1980 cohorts. This applies to students originating from both privileged and less privileged families. However, urban–rural inequalities are more evident for men than women, which over time has led gender differences to become considerably greater in rural areas. The results demonstrate that spatial inequality requires further attention in educational and stratification research, as the outcomes suggest that the urban–rural educational gap is not necessarily consistent over time.

Previous articleNext article No AccessAge Variations in the Formation of Educational and Occupational Career Goals of Brazilian Youth: A Cross-Cultural Test of the Wisconsin ModelDavid O. HansenDavid O. Hansen Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Comparative Education Review Volume 21, Number 1Feb., 1977 Sponsored by the Comparative and International Education Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/445920 Views: 3Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1977 The Comparative and International Education SocietyPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Angela W. Little, Ricardo Sabates Economic globalisation, youth expectations and social class: The case of Sri Lanka, International Journal of Educational Development 28, no.66 (Nov 2008): 708–722.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2008.01.002William H Sewell, Robert M Hauser, Kristen W Springer, Taissa S Hauser AS WE AGE: A REVIEW OF THE WISCONSIN LONGITUDINAL STUDY, 1957–2001, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 20 (Jan 2003): 3–111.https://doi.org/10.1016/S0276-5624(03)20001-9John E. Craig Chapter 4: The Expansion of Education, Review of Research in Education 9, no.11 (Jun 2016): 151–213.https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X009001151

ABSTRACTPrevious studies of trends in social inequalities in upper secondary track choices in Italy found evidence that, in the period of highest educational expansion, horizontal inequalities increased, consistently with the Effectively Maintained Inequality thesis (EMI). Our paper, focusing on the youngest birth cohorts (1958–1989), documents that enrolments at upper secondary schools have become almost universal and have been followed by a huge expansion of the academic track. Although the latter has also involved children from the lowest social strata, our evidence suggests that their relative disadvantage to attend the academic track, compared to the most privileged social groups, has diminished only slightly. When distinguishing between different curricula within the academic track, we found evidence supporting the EMI hypothesis also among recent cohorts: the expansion of the academic track has gone hand-in-hand with increasing social inequalities in the chances to attend more prestigious curricula. Finally, social class inequalities in the chances of enrolling at the academic track are stronger at high levels of parental education, while they are largely muted among low-educated parents. We suggest the latter as a possible mechanism to explain why educational expansion may not produce a decline in the association between social origins and educational attainment.

It has been amply demonstrated that investment in human capital is one of the prime, if not sine qua non, means by which a country develops and sustains economic growth.' The foundation of the link between education and economic development is human capital theory: education is a form of investment that yields high private and social returns. However, the more advanced the stage of a country's development and the higher the level of education considered, the more likely and plausible it is that the above proposition will be challenged.2 If education is in fact an investment, then it should be subject to the law of diminishing returns. Or, there might come a point where the returns have fallen below the opportunity cost of capital (for the private investor or the state), and therefore further investment in education might not be justifiable. Greece is a country in which educational expansion has been spectacular in the post-World War II period and, therefore, is a fertile ground for investigating the above contentions. In spite of rapid educational expansion, Greece is also an outlier in terms of the number of students studying abroad and, in general, the demand for higher education.' To what extent have the returns to education fallen during the period of expansion? What drives the demand for higher education, for domestic study, or for study abroad? What is the role of the public sector as a dominant employer of highly educated labor? What implications can be drawn regarding future educational investment priorities in the country? In this article, we document the changing profile of educational attainment of the population and the labor force in Greece and examine the extent to which educational expansion has led to wage compression in the economy. We also present estimates of rates of return to investment in different levels of schooling using data from a variety of data sets from 1960 to 1987. Contrasting these with data on the demand for higher education in Greece, we attempt to provide an explanation of the apparent puzzle of a strong demand for higher education coinciding with low

Based on the National Socio-Economic Survey (Susenas) from 1997 to 2011, this study examines the role of education in expenditure inequality in Indonesia under educational expansion since the 1997 financial crisis. This is achieved using the three decomposition methods: the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition; the decomposition of the Gini coefficient; and the hierarchical decomposition of the Theil index. The expansion of education, particularly basic education in rural areas, appears to have not only lowered educational disparity between the urban and rural sectors but also educational inequality within the rural sector. Due in large part to the declining educational disparity between the urban and rural sectors, the urban–rural expenditure disparity has narrowed since the mid-2000s. On the other hand, the expansion of higher education in urban areas appears to have played an important role in the recent rise in overall expenditure inequality by raising not only disparity between educational groups but also inequality within the tertiary education group. Basic education policies would still serve as an effective means to mitigate expenditure inequality, as they could reduce not only educational gap between the urban and rural sectors but also educational inequality within the rural sector by raising general educational levels. Since the expansion of higher education in urban areas seems to be one of the main factors of the recent rise in overall expenditure inequality, higher education policies would also be crucial.

Purpose This chapter provides a historical overview of policies on higher education in South Korea since 1945 and illustrates growth of science production based on expansion of higher education.

Using data from the 2013 Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP2013), we analyze intergenerational educationa1 mobility and the distribution of benefits among different groups in the course of educational expansion. Overall, educational expansion has raised educational mobility, reduced the possibility of downward intergenerational educational mobility, and increased the possibility of upward intergenerational mobility. However, the degree to which different types of households have benefited from the expansion of education is closely related to the urban-rural gap and the level of parenta1 education. The expansion of basic education has been more advantageous to the children of less-educated parents, whereas the expansion of higher education has mainly benefited the children of households with higher levels of parental education and to urban children. If, therefore, China is to promote the balanced development of educational modernization and build a nation that is an educational power, it needs to make active adjustments at the policy leve1.

In Colombianas en la vanguardia, Lucy M. Cohen attempts to make visible the crucial roles women played in the complex transformations of higher education in Colombia during the last 70 years. Expanding on her earlier work (Las colombianas ante la renovación universitaria, Ediciones Tercer Mundo, 1971) concerning the first female graduates to obtain a professional education in Colombia, Cohen selected 41 women from this group and 34 of their children to produce an ethnohistorical account of how women actively created—and experienced—new opportunities for professional training. Combining personal narratives of women who earned degrees in medicine, dentistry, law, and engineering with variety of written sources (newspapers, government publications, personal archives), Cohen argues that the entrance of women into the university was “a revolutionary phenomenon that affected the society as a whole” (p. xiii).Specifically, Cohen describes how during the turmoil of the late 1920s women began to struggle for new opportunities to broaden their participation in higher education and new forms of employment. While women were not formally excluded from the professions, they could not earn a degree at the university level because they were not usually allowed to obtain bachelor’s degrees (bachilleratos)—a quintessential formal requirement for professional education. Although during the 1920s conservative administrations made some effort to address the question of women’s education, the emergence of the liberal republic during the early 1930s offered more favorable conditions for the expansion of female education. These favorable conditions, argues Cohen, crucially helped—and were shaped by—women and their struggle to obtain a university-level education. The fourth International Women’s Conference in 1930, the passage of the civil code in 1932, Enrique Olaya Herrera’s decree in 1933, the reconfiguration and expansion of colegios, and the reorganization of the Universidad Nacional in 1936 created opportunities for women to earn bachelor’s degrees and, by extension, to study for professional degrees. These critical transformations united the feminist movement against the obstacles erected by those strongly opposed to women’s professional education, who posited “feminine incompetence,” problems of questioning traditional gender roles and compromise of women’s femininity and reputation.Cohen also contends that these women’s careers demonstrate that they crucially contributed to society in three important ways. They opened new spaces for women, exercised moral influence, and attempted to implement several policies designated to serve the community: in particular, to address “problems regarding women’s situation” (p. 243). In addition, Cohen describes the generational shifts between those “vanguard women” who initiated the struggle for participation in higher education and their children. She asserts that although women have pro duced “remarkable changes” in female higher education, “cultural notions” about the differences between the sexes have created salary hierarchies between men and women with the same educational background.While Cohen describes the experiences of these women and their children, she does not fully explore the reconfiguration of gender as women’s participation in higher education expanded. For instance, Cohen argues that by the 1980s, dentistry had become a female-dominated profession. Aside from some few descriptions, Cohen does not inquire deeply into how the entrance of women into a profession previously considered masculine reconfigured gender relations. Nor she does offer a careful analysis of the gendered justifications that shaped the distribution of professions.As a result, there is a strong tendency in the book to homogenize women as historical actors, assuming that “woman” denotes a common identity in their political struggles. The book makes clear that these women played critical roles in increasing access to education and professional training. Yet Cohen ignores how these processes created differences among women and affected them in different (and often contradictory) ways. When these professional women became influential in the implementation of policies addressing the “woman question,” she neglects a more careful analysis of how these norms created new circumstances for different social sectors. How did these changes in education and access to knowledge reformulate power relationships among women and their struggles to change their social and political positions? And, finally, when Cohen argues that women’s entrance into higher education was a revolutionary event that affected the entire society, one wonders whether the expansion of education was matched by equivalent opportunities for lower-class women. Did this “revolutionary” event affect or benefit “all women” equally during the 1930s and 1950s (p. xiii)? These questions, I think, remain unanswered in Cohen’s analysis.With these comments and questions aside, this book is evocative and highly informative. It will stand as an important contribution to our understanding of women’s roles in shaping the historical transformations that occurred in Colombia during the twentieth century.