Advantaged Backgrounds Research Articles

Great Equalizer or Great Selector? Reconsidering Education as a Moderator of Intergenerational Transmissions

A long-standing consensus among sociologists holds that educational attainment has an equalizing effect that increases mobility by moderating other avenues of intergenerational status transmission. This study argues that the evidence supporting this consensus may be distorted by two problems: measurement error in parents’ socioeconomic standing and the educational system’s tendency to progressively select people predisposed for mobility rather than to actually affect mobility. Analyses of family income mobility that address both of these problems in three longitudinal surveys converge on new findings. Intergenerational mobility is significantly lower among high school dropouts than among others, but there are no significant differences in mobility across higher education levels. This is consistent with compensatory advantage processes among the least educated in which individuals from advantaged backgrounds use family-based resources to compensate for their lack of human capital.

How Do Children Spend Their Time? Time Use and Skill Development in the PSID

As income and wealth inequality have grown in the United States in recent decades, the large and growing differences in household expenditures on children from advantaged versus disadvantaged backgrounds have increasingly become a matter of public concern. High socioeconomic status (SES) households (those with high incomes and/or high levels of parental education) increasingly spend more money on physical goods (books, tuition, computers, etc.) and more time on "enrichment" activities such as homework, tutoring, reading, and extracurricular activities that are thought to directly foster cognitive (academic) skills.

Does the expanded eligibility of conditional cash transfers enhance healthcare use among socio-economically disadvantaged mothers in India?

ABSTRACT The conditional cash transfer programme in India, the Janani Suraksha Yojana JSY), was introduced in 2005 to encourage women to give birth at health institutions. The JSY targeted women of disadvantaged socio-economic status. In November 2006, along with increased cash incentive, eligibility was expanded in ten low-performing states to all the women. However, this expansion could potentially have contributed to steepening the pro-rich gradients of healthcare utilisation. This paper estimates the impacts of this policy reform and shows that while the policy reform increases maternal healthcare use, it does not show impacts more favourable for women with advantageous socio-economic backgrounds.

Technology University Students’ Attitudes towards the English Graduation Benchmark (EGB): A Comparison between English-major and non-English Major Students

The English Graduation Benchmark (EGB) is a common criterion adopted by many universities in Taiwan, including both comprehensive and technology universities to monitor their graduates’ English ability. However, this common criterion has caused some debates in recent years about its appropriateness and fairness to students from less advantageous backgrounds. Some universities have decided to stop this policy in practice. This study aims to investigate technology university students’ perspectives and attitudes towards the EGB, as well as to compare and contrast the opinions of students from English and non-English departments. A quantitative method was adopted for this study. The questionnaire included: (1) Participants’ background information, (2) their experience of taking the proficiency tests, and (3) their thoughts on the EGB policy. In total, 360 students participated in this study. The results showed that most technology university students agreed with the establishment of the EGB. Students from English and non-English departments had positive attitudes because the benchmark motivated them to learn English in some way. Last but not least, technology university students considered the EGB to be useful for their future career development. This paper considers the possible implications of these findings for universities and the government, and suggests how they might re-conceptualize their policies to make them more sustainable.

Social Mobility and Promotion of Officers to Senior Ranks in the Royal Navy: Meritocracy or Class Ceiling?

This article examines the extent to which socioeconomic background affects the chances of promotion to senior ranks within the Royal Navy and how the upwardly mobile often face a “class ceiling.” The researchers collected quantitative data within the Royal Navy. The research found a disproportionate overrepresentation of officers from socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds, creating a homogenous upper echelon and self-selecting elite hierarchy. The authors argue for the systematic collection of socioeconomic background data and longitudinal analysis to focus efforts toward engendering the conditions for social mobility and the ability to quantitatively assess the impact of policy changes on future social mobility outcomes. The research contributes to understand contemporary social mobility issues and is the first quantitative analysis of Royal Navy officers’ socioeconomic backgrounds. The research provides perspectives on which other Armed Forces (including the United States) that face diversity issues could reflect. The article repositions military issues in mainstream academic discourse.

The sticky steps of the career ladder for engineers: the case of first-generation students in Germany

Although governments and higher education institutions across Europe are promoting agendas for widening the educational participation and increasing the social mobility of young people from lower socio-economic groups, very little has been written about the experiences of these individuals when seeking and entering employment. We aim to address this gap. Using a qualitative research approach, we explore the career expectations, experiences and limitations of first-generation university engineering students and graduates in Germany. The article draws upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu to demonstrate how social and cultural capitals instilled by parents and social peers are invaluable in developing personal and professional networks and eventual entry into the engineering professions. A lack of, or underdeveloped, capitals can inhibit career opportunities and ultimately the social mobility and professional choices of graduate engineers. Our research discovered that university graduates from less advantaged backgrounds face a ‘class ceiling’ at university, in obtaining an internship and then when gaining entry to and working in the engineering profession; they encounter ‘sticky steps’ at each stage of their career ladder.

Sustaining warm and inclusive transitions across the early years: insights from the START project

ABSTRACT Positive transitions across home, ECEC and compulsory school education (CSE) are critical in promoting children’s development and educational achievement: this seems especially the case for children from migrant backgrounds. However, as a consequence of entrenched institutional practices and lack of ownership the issues by the different groups of professionals involved, the way transitions are managed tends to unintentionally favour children from more advantaged backgrounds, whose families know how to navigate the educational system, including its flaws. The article presents the findings from a transnational participatory action-research study (START) carried out in four countries (Italy, Slovenia, England, Belgium), discussing how an inclusive transition approach can better address the needs of migrant children and families in a holistic way.

Changes in socioeconomic inequality in access to study abroad programs: A cross-country analysis

The growing evidence about the benefits of studying abroad calls for increased public efforts to equalize study abroad opportunities among university students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Using student-level data from the nationally representative surveys of three European countries (Italy, France and Germany) between the 2000s and mid-2010s, this paper investigates how the social gap in access to study abroad programs changed over time and what are the factors driving these changes. Logistic regressions are used in order to identify the determinants of study abroad program participation and a decomposition technique is employed in an attempt to both determine how much of the gap each factor explains and compare its relative contribution over time. The results indicate that, not only has disparity in study abroad participation rate between students from more and less advantaged backgrounds not decreased in any of the countries considered here, but there is consistent evidence showing that it has increased in Germany. Differences in earlier educational trajectories and performance between these two groups of students are important predictors of the gap. However, a large part of this gap remains unexplained, and this underscores the important role played by unobserved or difficult-to-measure factors in accounting for inequality.

Upward mobility and the demand for children: Evidence from China

This paper aims to investigate a new determinant of the demand for children: upward mobility. Upward mobility can affect the demand for children in two opposite directions: upward mobility means more resources to spend on childbearing and increases the demand for children; it also lowers the need to rely on children for old-age support and this leads to lower demand for children. In this paper, we use the difference between the subject's self-evaluations of the future and current social class as the measure of upward mobility, and fertility desire to represent the demand for children. Using the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data, we find that upward mobility significantly increases the demand for children, and the results are robust across various model specifications (pooled data regression, Poisson regression, and IV regression). The effect is concentrated among affluent and/or urban households, suggesting that those from more advantaged social-economic backgrounds appear to have a higher elasticity of fertility in response to upward mobility. Our results imply that improving upward mobility and public services such as education, health care, and social security would be effective to boost fertility in China.

Open market internships: what do intermediaries offer?

ABSTRACTParticipation in open market internships by higher education students and graduates has significantly expanded. This has created growing opportunities for intermediaries or ‘brokers’ to organise and charge fees for placing individuals in organisations, either in their home country or abroad. Despite being voluntary, open market internships may be endorsed by universities motivated to confer on their students a labour market advantage. Despite being the subject of significant public concern, no published research has systematically addressed how internship intermediaries operate. This study examined the websites of 25 intermediaries to examine the functions of these businesses and the nature of the internships they offer. The findings show that the majority of firms offered placements in a variety of disciplines, partnered with prestigious universities and organisations, and promised a plethora of employability capacities as a result of participation. None directly promised participants success in acquiring a job post-internship but they did frequently suggest that internships had proven career benefits. The high program fees charged to participants may constitute a significant barrier to participation for those from less advantaged backgrounds. The results contribute to emerging scholarship addressing the patterns of participation in (open market) internships and other forms of work experience.

GRANDPARENTAL CHILDCARE AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH SOCIOECONOMIC INEQUALITIES AND HEALTH: EVIDENCE FROM ENGLAND

It is well recognised that grandparents play a vital economic and social role in providing grandchild care to families. In the UK, about two million grandparents provide care to their grandchildren for at least ten hours per week. However, to date, little is known about the nature and extent of care they provide and whether, and how, this relates to socio-economic and health inequalities. In this paper, we use wave 8 of the nationally representative English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Using latent class analysis, we developed profiles of grandparent childcare combining newly collected information on the activities grandparents do with or for their grandchildren, as well as on the extent of (periodicity, frequency, and intensity), and motivations for such care. Using regressions, we then examined the extent to which grandparents’ involvement in childcare is patterned according to current and lifetime socio-economic characteristics and whether such inequalities are an important modifier of the relationship between grandparenting and mental and physical health. Preliminary results suggest that more advantaged grandparents are the ones undertaking less arduous caring tasks and for shorter periods whereas those looking after grandchildren more intensively and for financial reasons are more likely to be of less advantageous backgrounds (not married, low-educated, not homeowners, and poorer). Moreover, undertaking more frequent and challenging grandchild care activities seems to be associated with poorer health but only among grandparents in the more disadvantaged groups. Our results contribute to better understand the nature of grandparental childcare and its effect on health.

Antecedents and consequences of organized extracurricular activities among Chinese preschoolers in Hong Kong

Organized extracurricular activities (EAs) are an important component of the microsystem that impacts children's lives. Previous literature has primarily focused on school-aged children and youth in Western societies. This study utilized a longitudinal design and examined the antecedents and consequences of extracurricular participation in a sample of 194 Hong Kong Chinese preschoolers. The results showed that higher family socioeconomic status (SES) predicted higher levels of participation in EAs (e.g., attendance intensity and the breadth of participation). Children from higher-SES families were more likely to involve in non-academic-oriented EAs. Participation in EAs was generally associated with the growth trajectories of reading and math skills in children from less advantaged SES backgrounds, but not higher-SES children. In contrast, EA participation was not associated with children's social skills. Findings highlight the importance of examining the relationship between EA participation and children's early development in non-Western societies.

Beyond Graduation: Socio-economic Background and Post-university Outcomes of Australian Graduates

Research consistently shows that higher-education participation has positive impacts on individual outcomes. However, few studies explicitly consider differences in these impacts by socio-economic background (SEB), and those which do fail to examine graduate trajectories over the long run, non-labor outcomes and relative returns. We address these knowledge gaps by investigating the short- and long-term socio-economic trajectories of Australian university graduates from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds across multiple domains. We use high-quality longitudinal data from two sources: the Australian Longitudinal Census Dataset and the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. Low-SEB graduates experienced short-term post-graduation disadvantage in employment and occupational status, but not wages. They also experienced lower job and financial security up to 5 years post-graduation. Despite this, low-SEB graduates benefited more from higher education in relative terms—that is, university education improves the situation of low-SEB individuals to a greater extent than it does for high-SEB individuals.

Successful Aging in Individuals From Less Advantaged, Marginalized, and Stigmatized Backgrounds

Health and well-being in later life are heavily influenced by behaviors across the life course, which in turn are influenced by a variety of wider contextual, social, economic, and organizational factors. There is considerable potential for inequalities in health-promoting behaviors and health outcomes, arising from poverty, social, and environmental factors. This suggests that individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds and circumstances may have more exposure to (chronic) stressors, coupled with reduced access to resources, and increased susceptibility to risk factors for ill-health and mental disorders in later life. This drastically decreases the likelihood for successful aging in individuals from less advantaged backgrounds. Nevertheless, despite these adverse circumstances, some high-risk, disadvantaged individuals have been shown to achieve and maintain good health and well-being into later life. This scientific update provides an overview of recently published research with samples that, against expectations, demonstrate successful aging. Favorable personality traits, cognitive strategies, and a high-level of intrinsic motivation, paired with a supportive social environment, have been found to build a prosperous basis for successful aging and positive health outcomes in later life for individuals living in aversive environmental circumstances. For clinical psychologists, the movement towards the investigation of underlying mechanisms of successful aging from a psychological perspective, particularly in disadvantaged individuals, may be a critical step towards understanding the vast heterogeneity in aging. Successful aging is possible in disadvantaged individuals. Psychological and social resilience resources may compensate for the impact of disadvantage. The application of multi-level resilience models can aid future research on successful aging. Successful aging is possible in disadvantaged individuals. Psychological and social resilience resources may compensate for the impact of disadvantage. The application of multi-level resilience models can aid future research on successful aging.

Left behind? Over-time change in the social mobility of children from unskilled working-class backgrounds in Germany

Research on intergenerational social mobility tends to focus on examining the level of overall social fluidity in society. However, from a social justice perspective it can be argued that the type of social fluidity that matters most is upward mobility from the lowest rung of the social ladder. This article examines the labour market chances of children from parents in unskilled working-class positions, relative to children from skilled working-class and higher social class backgrounds, and how they have changed across four birth cohorts in post-WWII Germany. We find that individuals from unskilled working-class backgrounds have substantially lower labour market chances than individuals from skilled working-class backgrounds or higher social class backgrounds. Moreover, we find that the gap in labour market chances between individuals from unskilled working-class backgrounds and individuals from more advantaged backgrounds has not narrowed but, if anything, has widened across the four birth cohorts we examine. Our results suggest that an important factor underlying this sustained labour market inequality is a persistently high level of educational inequality between these groups.

The Distribution of School Quality: Do Schools Serving Mostly White and High-SES Children Produce the Most Learning?

What is schools’ role in the stratification system? One view is that schools are an important mechanism for perpetuating inequality because children from advantaged backgrounds (white and high socioeconomic) enjoy better school learning environments than their disadvantaged peers. But it is difficult to know this with confidence because children’s development is a product of both school and nonschool factors, making it a challenge to isolate school’s role. A novel approach for isolating school effects is to estimate the difference in learning when school is in versus out, what is called impact. Scholars employing this strategy have come to a remarkable conclusion—that schools serving disadvantaged children produce as much learning as those serving advantaged children. The empirical basis for this position is modest, however, and so we address several shortcomings of the previous research by analyzing a nationally representative sample of about 3,500 children in 270 schools from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Cohort of 2011. With more comprehensive data and better scales, we also find no difference in impact on reading scores across schools serving poor or black children versus those serving nonpoor or white children. These patterns challenge the view that differences in school quality play an important role shaping achievement gaps and prompt us to reconsider theoretical positions regarding schools and inequality.

The Distribution of School Quality: Do Schools Serving Mostly White and High-SES Children Produce the Most Learning?:

What is schools’ role in the stratification system? One view is that schools are an important mechanism for perpetuating inequality because children from advantaged backgrounds (white and high soci...

The Uneven Implementation of Universal School Policies: Maternal Education and Florida's Mandatory Grade Retention Policy

Educational accountability policies are a popular tool to close the achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students. However, these policies may exacerbate inequality if families from advantaged backgrounds are better able to advocate for their children and thus circumvent policy. We investigate this possibility in the context of the early grade retention policy in Florida, which requires all students with reading skills below grade level to be retained in the third grade, yet grants exemptions under special circumstances. We find that Florida's third-grade retention policy is in fact enforced differentially depending on children's socioeconomic background, especially maternal education. Holding exemption eligibility constant, scoring right below the promotion cutoff results in an increase in the probability of retention that is 14 percent greater for children whose mothers have less than a high school degree compared with children whose mothers have a bachelor's degree or more. We also find that the discrepancies in retention rates are mainly driven by the fact that students with well-educated mothers are more likely to be promoted based on subjective exemptions, such as teacher portfolios.

Gender Issues in Income-Contingent Student Loans: Do Women Benefit?

Although tertiary study is strongly associated with positive wealth outcomes, for those on the margin student debt can be a deterrent, a source of financial stress, or an indicator of irresponsible bad financial behaviour. In Australia, recent debate regarding the income-contingent loan (ICL) student debt scheme has highlighted gender differences in the ability to repay the debt. Drawing on the Australian HILDA Survey data for 2002–14, this study examined the gender differences for student debt holders, pinpointing some of the gender differences in the student debt trajectory and transitions over the sample period. Findings do show that student debtors in general are slightly less satisfied with their financial situation than the general population and are more likely to be from a socio-economically advantaged background. Results indicate that women are not particularly disadvantaged under the ICL scheme regarding the issues examined.

Desire to address costs at time of treatment decisions among patients with metastatic breast cancer.

6640 Background: Costs of cancer care may impact access to therapy, adherence, and distress among patients. However, the degree to which patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) wish to discuss financial issues when making treatment decisions is unknown. Methods: In a single arm feasibility trial, 40 women with newly diagnosed or progressive MBC completed a 1-page survey regarding goals and priorities for discussion with the oncology team. The survey included 17 potential priorities for discussion in the domains: treatment options, symptom management, emotional concerns, planning for the future, and lifestyle. We evaluated participants’ interest in prioritizing discussion of financial issues and sociodemographic and clinical correlates of this preference. We examined the relationship between desire to discuss financial issues and both distress on the Distress Thermometer (DT) and satisfaction with cancer care using Fisher’s exact test. Results: Among 40 participants, 11 (28%) reported interest in discussing financial issues when making treatment decisions, 29 (72%) were not interested. Average age was 57 (range 31-73), and the majority were white (85%) and college graduates (66%). Only 18% of white patients were interested in addressing cost, while 83% of non-white patients were interested (p < 0.01). Those with a college education were less likely to prioritize financial discussion compared to no college (16% vs. 47%, p = 0.04). Patients interested in discussing cost were more likely to have a household income < $50,000 (50% vs. 22% > $50,000, n.s.) and to have Medicaid (50% vs. 25% other insurance, n.s.). Additionally, patients with higher levels of distress (35% vs. 21% DT < 4, n.s.) and those on novel targeted or biologic therapy (42% vs. 21% other therapy, n.s.) were more likely to prioritize discussion of costs. Desire to discuss cost was not related to satisfaction with care. Conclusions: A substantial minority of patients with MBC, particularly those from less advantaged backgrounds, wish to discuss financial issues at time of treatment decisions. Financial toxicity research should recognize that not all patients desire this discussion and evaluate methods to screen for financial concerns and barriers to care.