The Educational and Early Occupational Status Attainment Process: Replication and Revision

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether a recently proposed recursive model of the educational and occupational attainment process that had been evaluated for farm boys is applicable for youth from more diverse residential backgrounds. The basic question asked in the study is how well the model fits data for young men from communities of differing size. A related aim is to present a model which adequately explains the attainment process for boys from all residential backgrounds. Using data for five community-size categories the Sewell-Haller-Portes model is extended to include three additional paths of influence. The revised model is shown to be quite adequate for the total sample as well as for all sizes of community categories. Suggestions for theory and future research are offered. IN their influential volume, Blau and Duncan (1967) presented a recursive model of the occupational status attainment of American male adults. It is composed of two antecedent structural variables, father's education and father's occupation; two intervening behavioral variables, respondent's education and respondent's first job; and the dependent variable, respondent's occupational level in 1962. For a national sample, their model explains 26% of the variance in respondent's education, 33% of the variance in first job, and 43% of the variance in current occupational status. The addition of selected demographic variables failed to improve the effectiveness of the model. Subsequent research by Duncan, Featherman, and Duncan (1968) resulted in minor modifications. The main objective was to provide a more complete explanation of the process without necessarily increasing the proportion 1 Presented at a joint session of the American Sociological Association and the Rural Sociological Society, San Francisco, September 1969. The research reported herein was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Public Health Service (M-6275) and the Social and Rehabilitation Service, Social Security Administra