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1 – 10 of over 97000In their authoritative literature review, Breen and Jonsson (2005) claim that ‘one of the most significant trends in the study of inequalities in educational attainment in…
Abstract
In their authoritative literature review, Breen and Jonsson (2005) claim that ‘one of the most significant trends in the study of inequalities in educational attainment in the past decade has been the resurgence of rational-choice models focusing on educational decision making’. The starting point of the present contribution is that these models have largely ignored the explanatory relevance of social interactions. To remedy this shortcoming, this paper introduces a micro-founded formal model of the macro-level structure of educational inequality, which frames educational choices as the result of both subjective ability/benefit evaluations and peer-group pressures. As acknowledged by Durlauf (2002, 2006) and Akerlof (1997), however, while the social psychology and ethnographic literature provides abundant empirical evidence of the explanatory relevance of social interactions, statistical evidence on their causal effect is still flawed by identification and selection bias problems. To assess the relative explanatory contribution of the micro-level and network-based mechanisms hypothesised, the paper opts for agent-based computational simulations. In particular, the technique is used to deduce the macro-level consequences of each mechanism (sequentially introduced) and to test these consequences against French aggregate individual-level survey data. The paper's main result is that ability and subjective perceptions of education benefits, no matter how intensely differentiated across agent groups, are not sufficient on their own to generate the actual stratification of educational choices across educational backgrounds existing in France at the beginning of the twenty-first century. By computational counterfactual manipulations, the paper proves that network-based interdependencies among educational choices are instead necessary, and that they contribute, over and above the differentiation of ability and of benefit perceptions, to the genesis of educational stratification by amplifying the segregation of the educational choices that agents make on the basis of purely private ability/benefit calculations.
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Kea Tijdens, Miroslav Beblavý and Anna Thum-Thysen
The purpose of this paper is to overcome the problems that skill mismatch cannot be measured directly and that demand side data are lacking. It relates demand and supply…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to overcome the problems that skill mismatch cannot be measured directly and that demand side data are lacking. It relates demand and supply side characteristics by aggregating data from jobs ads and jobholders into occupations. For these occupations skill mismatch is investigated by focussing on demand and supply ratios, attained vis-à-vis required skills and vacancies’ skill requirements in relation to the demand-supply ratios.
Design/methodology/approach
Vacancy data from the EURES job portal and jobholder data from WageIndicator web-survey were aggregated by ISCO 4-digit occupations and merged in a database with 279 occupations for Czech Republic, being the only European country with disaggregated occupational data, coded educational data, and sufficient numbers of observations.
Findings
One fourth of occupations are in excessive demand and one third in excessive supply. The workforce is overeducated compared to the vacancies’ requirements. A high demand correlates with lower educational requirements. At lower occupational skill levels requirements are more condensed, but attainments less so. At higher skill levels, requirements are less condensed, but attainments more so. Educational requirements are lower for high demand occupations.
Research limitations/implications
Using educational levels is a limited proxy for multidimensional skills. Higher educated jobholders are overrepresented.
Practical implications
In Europe labour market mismatches worry policy makers and Public Employment Services alike.
Originality/value
The authors study is the first for Europe to explore such a granulated approach of skill mismatch.
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The transgenerational influence of inherited family capital on consumers' luxury consumption has been studied recently in the mature luxury market. However, little…
Abstract
Purpose
The transgenerational influence of inherited family capital on consumers' luxury consumption has been studied recently in the mature luxury market. However, little research explores this topic in the emerging luxury market. In China's Confucian culture, “family face” as part of “family inheritance” has been conceptualized as a factor driving luxury consumption. However, this hypothesis has not been empirically tested. The current research, therefore, seeks to examine the impact of economic and cultural capital on Chinese consumers' luxury consumption within the family inheritance context and the roles that face concern and gender play to reveal the particularities of a specific emerging luxury market.
Design/methodology/approach
A sample of 324 Chinese consumers was recruited in Shanghai. With the full sample, the author first assessed the effects of economic and educational capital (both personal and family sources) and face concern on luxury consumption using regression analyses. Next, the author conducted the regression analyses again by gender.
Findings
Unlike trends in the mature luxury market, Chinese consumers' educational levels do not drive their luxury consumption, and the transgenerational influence of economic and cultural capital functions as a negative factor. Influenced by the patrilineal tradition, higher levels of luxury consumption to compensate for parents' lower income and educational levels and to enhance family face are found only in the male consumer group, but not in the female group.
Originality/value
This research contributes to expanding the current understanding of emerging luxury markets and how the Confucian tradition influences Chinese consumers' luxury consumption through gender role norms.
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Rumiana Stoilova and Petya Ilieva-Trichkova
The focus of this article is on gender justice with respect to opportunities (educational) and outcome (earnings). The main research question is whether educational…
Abstract
Purpose
The focus of this article is on gender justice with respect to opportunities (educational) and outcome (earnings). The main research question is whether educational opportunities are positively converted into fairness of income, and for whom and where this is the case. The importance of this study lies in the understanding that the subjective feeling of justice is a significant measure of quality of life, of the individual's subjective feeling of happiness and of the fulfilment of the goals people have reason to value.
Design/methodology/approach
The study takes a micro-macro approach, combining macro-level data taken from official statistics and micro-data from the 2018 European Social Survey for 25 European countries; the authors also apply multilevel modelling to the data analysis.
Findings
At individual level the authors found gender differences in the associations between education and fairness of educational opportunities. With regard to the scope of fairness, the authors emphasise that fairness of educational opportunities and net pay in European countries is less likely to be felt by someone who has a lower educational level. Higher educational expenditures are positively correlated with fairness of educational opportunities but not with fairness of net pay.
Originality/value
This article contributes to theoretical, empirical and policy-relevant gender justice research on the link between inequalities and justice perceptions. The authors have expanded the theoretical understanding of the concept of gender justice by taking into account the role of a specific gender norm on fairness perceptions. The norm, when asked about in a gender-neutral way, is not associated with fairness of pay, but when posed as a question specifically to women, has a negative relationship with perceptions of fair pay. The empirical contribution consists in the evaluation of individual and country mechanisms from a gender justice perspective. The policy contribution consists in questioning the belief that longer paid maternity leave is beneficial for women. In countries with long paid leave available to mothers, women reported even lower levels of fairness of net pay than men.
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Joanna Sikora and Lawrence J. Saha
Our first goal is to discuss new information for national policymaking which may arise from the analyses of international achievement study data. The second is to…
Abstract
Our first goal is to discuss new information for national policymaking which may arise from the analyses of international achievement study data. The second is to illustrate this potential by exploring determinants of students' career plans in a cross-national perspective. Using neo-institutionalism as our theoretical framework, we propose that the influence of a global educational ideology encourages high levels of occupational ambitions among students. This is particularly the case in countries where the transfer of this ideology is supported by the reception of aid for education, where economic prosperity is at modest levels but the service sector employment is expanding. To explore this proposition, we analyze students' occupational expectations using the 2006 PISA surveys from 49 countries. We account for a broad range of possible determinants by estimating three-level hierarchical models in which students are clustered in schools and schools within countries. We find that at individual and school levels, ambition is positively correlated with economic and noneconomic resources. In contrast, students in poorer countries, where secondary education is not yet universally accessible, tend to be more ambitious. The global educational ideology, indicated by the reception of education-related aid, is associated with student career optimism, while students in affluent nations with less economic inequality have modest occupational plans. In addition, the rate of service sector expansion is positively related to high levels of ambition. These patterns hold even after we control for cross-national variation in the extent to which PISA respondents represent populations of 15-year-olds in their countries.
This study examines the extent to which educational outcomes are transmitted from mothers to daughters in rural China. An analysis of the 2010 China Family Panel Survey…
Abstract
This study examines the extent to which educational outcomes are transmitted from mothers to daughters in rural China. An analysis of the 2010 China Family Panel Survey reveals that: (i) how far daughters go in their education is strongly associated with their mothers’ education; (ii) the association between mothers’ and daughters’ educational outcomes in rural China was found to be stronger than the corresponding relationships between mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, and fathers and sons, especially at higher levels of education; and (iii) while having more brothers and being born later worsens daughters’ educational outcomes, mothers’ higher education effectively mitigates these negative effects. These findings add to a growing body of literature and empirical evidence that challenges conventional social mobility research paradigms that neglect mothers’ roles. More importantly, the distinction between mother–daughter relationship and that between fathers and daughters and mothers and sons highlights the fact that education is likely transmitted intergenerationally via mechanisms that differ depending on the gendered parent–child pairs.
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Chenhui Wang, Suqi Li and Yu-Sheng Su
This study focused on parents' health anxiety by proxy about their children when they started learning online during the COVID-19 pandemic, to explore the impact of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study focused on parents' health anxiety by proxy about their children when they started learning online during the COVID-19 pandemic, to explore the impact of academic stress by parent-proxy on parents' learning support services with the mediating role of health anxiety by parent-proxy and the moderating role of parental educational level.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 8,940 primary school students' parents participated in the study. Bootstrapping was performed to test the constructed model.
Findings
(1) Academic stress by parent-proxy positively predicted health anxiety by parent-proxy. (2) Health anxiety by parent-proxy significantly positively predicted learning support services. (3) Academic stress by parent-proxy also significantly positively predicted learning support services. (4) Academic stress by parent-proxy positively predicted parents' learning support services through the mediating effect of health anxiety by parent-proxy. (5) Parental educational level moderated the relationship between academic stress by parent-proxy, health anxiety by parent-proxy, and learning support services. Academics and parents will benefit from the conclusions of this study in both theory and practice.
Originality/value
During the COVID-19 pandemic, offline learning has been replaced with online learning, which has brought with it many physical and mental health problems, including additional academic stress. Most studies on learning support services have focused on offline learning. However, this study explored the relationships between academic stress by parent-proxy, health anxiety by parent-proxy, learning support services, and parental educational level in the context of online learning. Results show that it is necessary to pay attention to academic stress and health to provide children with appropriate learning support services.
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Elsy Verhofstadt, Hans De Witte and Eddy Omey
The purpose of the paper is to clarify the mixed empirical results concerning the association between educational level and job satisfaction. It seeks to test whether the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to clarify the mixed empirical results concerning the association between educational level and job satisfaction. It seeks to test whether the positive relationship between educational level and job satisfaction is caused by indicators of job quality.
Design/methodology/approach
Three models are estimated. In the first model, the impact of the educational level on job satisfaction is examined using an ordinal regression analysis. The second model estimates the impact of the educational level on indicators of job quality, using the appropriate technique (OLS or binary logit). The third model reveals the “true” impact of the educational level on job satisfaction, when the job quality indicators are added as independent variables. Survey data on Flemish youth in their first job are used.
Findings
The results show that higher educated workers are more satisfied than their lower educated counterparts, because they have a job of better quality. When one controls for all job characteristics, a negative relationship appears, with higher educated workers reporting less job satisfaction.
Research limitations/implications
The hypothesis is only tested for a sample of Flemish youth in their first job (cross‐sectional data).
Practical implications
Future empirical studies on job satisfaction should include indicators for job quality, in order to reveal the true effect of educational level on job satisfaction. Investing in the job quality of lower educated young workers might boost their job satisfaction and as a consequence also their productivity.
Originality/value
Suggests that the diverging results concerning the relationship between educational level and job satisfaction could be due to insufficient control for indicators of job quality.
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Globalisation drives many people to seek overseas employment. However, research on the relation between educational attainment and occupations/incomes mostly focuses on…
Abstract
Purpose
Globalisation drives many people to seek overseas employment. However, research on the relation between educational attainment and occupations/incomes mostly focuses on domestic workers while excluding overseas migrant workers. Therefore, the present study includes overseas migrant labourers and aims to examine the relation between educational attainment and occupations/incomes and gender disparity within this relation in Nepal.
Design/methodology/approach
This study conducted interview surveys with teachers and home-visit surveys with the subjects and their families based on the school records to collect information such as educational attainment, current occupation, monthly income, etc. The study compared occupations and incomes by educational attainment and gender and analysed the trend. Gender disparity in average monthly incomes was also analysed.
Findings
The results of this study registered almost no difference in the proportions of mental labour and high incomes for both males and females at the primary to secondary education echelons. Surprisingly, the average monthly incomes of females were around 60% or less than the remunerations offered to male workers with equivalent educational qualifications. This disparity does not narrow even at the higher educational classifications. Moreover, the disparity is widening even more by overseas migrant labour.
Originality/value
Since this study gathered extensive data on individual youth and did not rely on secondary data, it was possible to perform an in-depth analysis and accurately portray the real situation faced by Nepalese youth. Moreover, by including overseas migrant labourers, the study could examine the relation between educational attainment and occupations/incomes not only in the domestic market but also in the global market.
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During the past few decades, South Korea has experienced a remarkable educational expansion at its secondary and tertiary levels as well as at the primary level, resulting…
Abstract
During the past few decades, South Korea has experienced a remarkable educational expansion at its secondary and tertiary levels as well as at the primary level, resulting in extraordinary variation between the educational attainment of recent and older cohorts. Using 1990 data from the Social Inequality Study in Korea, the study examines trends in the influence of social background on educational attainment across three male cohorts born between 1921 and 1970. Although in general the impacts of social origin have changed little at the secondary levels of education, there is a significant reduction in the effect of father’s occupation on the odds of completing middle school for the youngest cohort. From a multinomial model of transitions to each type of tertiary education, it is found that family background has a stronger effect in the transition from high school to four-year university than to junior college. Interestingly, there has been an increase across cohorts in the influence of father’s education on the likelihood of entering a university, while such a pattern is not observed for the transition to junior college.