Higher Social Mobility Research Articles

Emotion Interference Solves Social Dilemma

Roles of emotion in decision-making have been attracting attention in neuroeconomics and behavioral game theory. We mathematically demonstrate that “emotion interference”, a recently-discovered psychological phenomenon [1] helps to solve social dilemma in a one-shot prisoner’s dilemma game. Furthermore, the present theory also accounts for the violation of Savage’s sure-thing principle in the prisoner’s dilemma [2]. Furthermore, it is also explained that why people in the society with higher social mobility are more cooperative. Relations of the present work to recently evolving fields of neuroeconomics and quantum decision theory are discussed.

Markets and jungles

Economic institutions determine prospects for growth and development. This paper examines necessary conditions for an economy to support institutions that implement markets. Agents differ in land holdings, skill, and power. A competitive market assigns land to the skilled, not necessarily to the powerful. Therefore a market allocation needs to be robust to coalitional expropriation. In a dynamic setting, market payoffs may induce sufficient inequality in next period’s endowments for markets to alternate with expropriation in a limit cycle, decreasing efficiency and amplifying macroeconomic fluctuations. Long run stability of markets is favored by higher social mobility, more initial equality, and less mismatch between skill and land.

Changing household patterns of young couples in low- and middle-income countries

While young couples in Western societies generally form a new household, in low-income societies new unions are often incorporated into existing households. However, there is a growing tendency in the nuclearization of households as intergenerational co-residence is undermined by growing wage labour opportunities that provide incentives for rural–urban migration and because small nuclear families adapt better to urban societies characterized by high geographic and social mobility. The objective of this paper is therefore to jointly study for a selection of low- to middle-income countries the socioeconomic and demographic conditions of women aged 15–34 and their partners in relation to their household patterns with particular interest in the comparison of nuclear and extended households. The analysis will mainly rely on data from the Integrated Public Use of Microdata Series International database ( https://international.ipums.org/international/) from which census samples for the last two or latest available census rounds for 18 countries have been extracted. Results showed that women being of older age (within the 15–34 range) and at the same time having attained at least primary school education, having a husband who does not work in the primary sector and who is neither much older nor much younger were all associated with living in a nuclear household. However, individual factors explained only a small part of the overall variation in the household arrangements of young couples, suggesting that differences between countries in these dimensions do not explain much of the difference in household structure. Rather, societal indicators like economic development and the average age at marriage – that were significant in our models – may explain better the overall slow transition towards the nuclear family.

Triumph of the City * Edward Glaeser

This is an enjoyably readable celebration of the city by a prominent urban economist, until now known more for heavy theory than writing for a popular audience. The basic target of the book is the anti-urbanism that abounds in the popular imagination, in the national politics of many countries, and even in certain corners of the academic community. Glaeser synthesizes the theory and evidence that cities are sources of high productivity, wealth, social mobility, innovation, mutual understanding and personal freedom and even environmental sustainability. The images of cities as cauldrons of inequality, ethnic conflict, destruction of nature, alienation and such, which dominate much of the discussion, are not so much false, as they are one-sided and lacking in nuance. This book is a welcome corrective to that. It also exudes the writer's affection for cities, and shows an attractive intellectual breadth and sharp wit. Because the book is written as a popular tome, relying heavily on examples and anecdotes, its theoretical structure is not worn on its sleeve. The book is nonetheless informed by the strong theoretical framework from Glaeser's important work in urban economics and the output of regional scientists. This framework is used to generate some very strong positions on why new urban regions develop, central cities versus suburbs, and how urban and regional policy can make metropolitan regions function better. Moreover, the book does not limit itself to merely arguing against anti-urbanism; it trumpets the ‘triumph’ of the city as the key to human development in the 21st century. These three issues—the book's theoretical framework; its policy framework; and its vision of the 21st century—are the central concerns of this review.

Social life factors affecting the mortality, longevity, and birth rate of total Japanese population: effects of rapid industrialization and urbanization.

To expand upon the findings that lower mortality was found in Japanese urban areas in contrast to the Western model where in the US and Britain the risk of death was higher in metropolitan areas and conurbations 22 social life indicators are examined among 46 prefectures in Japan in terms of their effect on age specific mortality life expectancy and age adjusted marriage divorce and birth rates. The effects of these factors on age adjusted mortality for 8 major working and nonworking male populations where also analyzed. The 22 social life factors were selected from among 227 indicators in the system of Statistical Indicators on Life. Factor analysis was used to classify the indicators into 8 groups of factors for 1970 and 7 for 1975. Factors 1-3 for both years were rural or urban residence low income and unemployment and prefectural age distribution. The 4th for 1970 was home help for the elderly and for 1975 social mobility. The social life indicators were classified form 1 to 8 as rural residence in 1970 and 1975 urban residence low income high employment old age young age social mobility and home help for the elderly which moved from 8th place in 1970 to 1st in 1975. Between 1960-75 rapid urbanization took place with the proportion of farmers fishermen and workers declining from 43% in 1960 to 19% in 1975. The results of stepwise regression analysis indicate a positive relationship of urban residence with mortality of men and women except school-aged and middle-aged women and the working populations as well as life expectancy at birth for males and females and ages 20 and 40 years for males. Rural residence was positively associated with the male marriage rate whereas the marriage rate for females was affected by industrialization and urbanization. High employment and social mobility were positively related to the female marriage rate. Low income was positively related to the divorce rate for males and females. Rural residence and high employment were positively related to the birth rate. The birth rate is higher in rural areas. Mortality of professional engineering and administrative workers was slightly lower than the total working population while sales workers those in farming fishing and forestry and in personal and domestic service had significantly higher mortality. The mortality of the nonworking population was 6-8 times higher than sales transportation and communication and personal and domestic service as well as the total population.

Toward a Unified Stratification Theory: Structure, Genome, and Status across Human Societies

While social scientists and geneticists have a shared interest in the personal characteristics instrumental to status attainment, little has been done to integrate these disparate perspectives. This is unfortunate, as the perspectives offer complementary insights, which, if properly combined, stand to substantially improve understanding of the stratification process. This article synthesizes research from the social sciences and genetics to develop a multistage theory of how social structure moderates the influence of the genome on status outcomes. Its thesis is that the strength of the genome's influence on status is primarily moderated by two properties of social structure—levels of resource inequality and social mobility. Thus, it is theorized that under conditions of low inequality and high social mobility, the influence of the genome on status will be high relative to conditions of high inequality and low social mobility. The essential logic is (1) as inequality increases, the characteristics and abilities intrinsically useful in status attainment are increasingly influenced by individuals' social backgrounds and decreasingly determined by their genomes; and (2) as social closure and inequality increase, the utility of these characteristics and abilities to status attainment is diminished. In sum, a model of status attainment is developed proposing that while both genome and social background influence the status attainment process, the relative importance of these factors is determined by the surrounding structure of the society.

Trust, cooperation, and market formation in the U.S. and Japan.

Compared with the U.S., Japan is believed to have a collectivist culture that nurtures high trust. Results from laboratory and survey research, however, show that Americans are more likely to trust strangers than are Japanese. Why would trust be lower in a collectivist culture? We use an agent-based computational model to explore the evolutionary origin of this puzzling empirical finding. Computer simulations suggest that higher social mobility in the U.S. may be the explanation. With low mobility, agents rarely encounter strangers and thus remain highly parochial, trusting only their neighbors and avoiding open-market transactions with outsiders. With moderate mobility, agents learn to read telltale signs of character so that they can take advantage of better opportunities outside the neighborhood. However, if mobility is too great, there is too little trustworthiness to make the effort to discriminate worthwhile. This finding suggests that higher mobility in the U.S. may explain why Americans are more trusting than Japanese, but if mobility becomes too high, the self-reinforcing high-trust equilibrium could collapse.

The restructuring of London's labour force: migration and shifting opportunities, 1971–91

Summary The links between migration in and out of London and intergenerational social mobility are explored. Opportunities to enter high‐grade jobs are greater in London, but so is the competition. The selectivity of migration explains the high social mobility associated with both in‐ and out‐migration; those who stay in London are much less mobile, be they male or female. Black migrants to London do not share the fast escalator with white migrants, and London stayers come disproportionately from ethnic minority backgrounds. Socially mobile Londoners of both sexes leave far faster than the non‐mobile, but women are less often ‘creamed off’. Women with high‐level jobs rarely leave; when they stay, they are less likely to leave the labour force. The selectivity of both types of migration concentrates ‘under‐achievement’ on London stayers; racial discrimination may contribute to this outcome.

Biodiversity, taxonomic richness and specialists-generalists during Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene times in Pampa and Patagonia (Argentina, Southern South America)

Human subsistence systems in the Pampa and Patagonia regions evolved from generalists during the Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene to specialists during the Middle Holocene, according to diversity and relative taxonomic richness counts. The general hypothesis is summarized as follows: 1) at the end of the Pleistocene and beginning of the Holocene (interval between 13.0 and 8.5 ka), the Pampean and Patagonian landscape was different from the present one, with a mammal biodiversity larger than in the Middle Holocene; 2) during the Middle Holocene, the highest mammal taxonomic richness corresponds to one species, Lama guanicoe . Although available biomass was the same for the hunter-gatherers, it was due to the larger abundance of individuals of that single species; 3) the emerged continental surface during the Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene was more extensive than during the Middle Holocene. In ecological terms, this greater land mass is reflected in an equally larger biodiversity, even assuming that populations of Pleistocenic megafauna were diminishing in number since ca. 13,500 years BP. Based on the analysis of our own information and published data, we state that the human groups which colonized the Pampean and Patagonian regions towards the end of the Pleistocene and beginning of the Holocene used generalist strategies encompassing a wide range of faunal resources (birds and mammals, especially of terrestrial habitats). Plasticity of hunter-gatherer societies, plus a complex technology, a higher social mobility and unfilled territories, allowed them to rapidly replace one resource for another in conditions of environmental stress. This lifestyle resulted in the occupation of different ecological zones (niches) and the evolution to specialized systems, based on one or a few mammal species, once the colonization and support in the different environments were successful and the resources of the Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene disappeared.

A Compared Cohort History of Residential Mobility, Social Change and Home-ownership in Paris and the Rest of France

The joint analysis of two INED longitudinal surveys, one based on a national sample and the other on a sample of Parisians, presents a reconstruction of the residential history of a cohort born between 1926 and 1935 and an evaluation of the role of the Paris region in the migration patterns of these generations. The first part of the paper advocates the advantages offered by such longitudinal data which nevertheless presents the researcher with new challenges. For those French generations born between the two world wars, the beginnings in the post-war housing crisis were difficult. A comparison of the social as well as the residential histories of individuals confirms the close link between geographical and social mobility. The analysis of the social origin and the occupational characteristics of individuals in these categories exhibits the high social mobility in the Paris region which favours dynasties of professionals and provides better opportunities for the other occupations. The Paris region appears as the ideal location to improve one's chances of social advancement. Another characteristic of the post-1950s housing transformation is the diffusion of home-ownership. This affected provincials and Parisians in different ways, both of which are closely examined.

Avenues to Adulthood: The Origins of the High School and Social Mobility in an American Suburb

Avenues to Adulthood: The Origins of the High School and Social Mobility in an American Suburb

The Americas

The Americas

Avenues to Adulthood: The Origins of the High School and Social Mobility in an American Suburb

Avenues to Adulthood: The Origins of the High School and Social Mobility in an American Suburb

Avenues to Adulthood: The Origins of the High School and Social Mobility in an American Suburb

Avenues to Adulthood: The Origins of the High School and Social Mobility in an American Suburb

Avenues to Adulthood: The Origins of the High School and Social Mobility in an American Suburb. REED UEDA

Avenues to Adulthood: The Origins of the High School and Social Mobility in an American Suburb. REED UEDA

Avenues to Adulthood: The Origins of the High School and Social Mobility in an American Suburb

Introduction 1. Farm village to commuter suburb 2. The evolution of educational leadership 3. The free high school 4. The rise of Yankee city and the prolongation of schooling 5. Popularising high school: 'the college of the people' 6. The origins of high school youth culture 7. Educational opportunity and social mobility 8. The birth of progressive reform and the junior high school Conclusion Appendices Notes Index.

The Desire for Voluntary Childlessness among Low-Income Youth

Data from 480 males and 466 females from low-income groups in 6 Southern states are used to explore differences betweeen those who state a desire for a childfree life and those who want children. Independent variables include educational and occupational aspirations and expectations labor force intentions of young women age at marriage preference and desires for urban residence. It was found that the high school aged young women who wanted to remain childless had higher social mobility orientations were less willing to accept the position of housewife only were more likely to prefer an urban residence and expected to marry at later ages. Males desiring no children had lower educational and occupational goals than those wanting children consistent with previous research which found a low career involvement among childless men. In the present study males who did not want children expected to marry at later ages and were more likely to want to live in urban areas. (authors modified)

The High School and Social Mobility in a Streetcar Suburb: Somerville, Massachusetts, 1870-1910

The High School and Social Mobility in a Streetcar Suburb: Somerville, Massachusetts, 870--I910 Since the late nineteenth century, when American educators proclaimed that public high-school attendance would serve abolish caste, the role of the high school in the process of social mobility has been a controversial subject. Recently, Katz, Bowles, and Gintis have argued that the American public high school has reinforced inequality by facilitating the transfer of middle-class status from parents to children. Ravitch has demurred, maintaining that the available historical research does not permit such definitive conclusions.1 To provide an empirical and historical focus further to clarify this issue, this article examines the social origins and adult life courses of students who attended high school in Somerville, Massachusetts, from 1870 to I9IO. It shows that the process of advancement from high-school student to adult was subtly structured by class, ethnicity, gender, and place of residence. The high school aided the upward mobility of a growing fraction of the adolescent population, but according to limits imposed by these background factors. By educating students who had a high rate of entry into white-collar jobs, the high school helped form an increasingly pluralistic middle class in early twentieth-century Somerville.

Społeczne determinanty orientacji moralnych

Poland is a country of high social mobility, of a high percentage of transient population that moves from the country to the cities. These changes create numerous problems of social adaptation. Some of them arise when two different groups of different moral attitudes come in contact and realize that they differ. Although some authors believe that the Poles have highly uniform moral views and opinions, the present writer has made the claim that it is not so that village population have different moral attitudes from those displayed by city inhabitants. The article supports this claim by citing findings based on a questionnaire that was filled by 500 village and 500 city inhabitants. The two populations were found to be different on at least four counts.

Social Mobility and the Durability of Family Ties

Urbanization and industrialization are often identified as processes destructive of familial and kinship relationships. Research in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, the focus of forced-draft industrialization since 1945, shows that contacts between fathers and sons, and contacts between brothers, remain intense despite far-reaching urbanization, and geographical and social mobility. Frequency of contact is depressed more by factors of distance and inconvenience than by any others, and high social position and mobility enhance rather than discourage kinship contacts. A multiple regression analysis on data from 326 males with living but non-coresident fathers and/ or brothers forms the basis of the analysis.