Class Variations Flashcards
Billari, Hiekel, and Liefbroer 2019 – The Social Stratification of Choice int he Transition to Adulthood
three forms of stratification during the transition to adulthood: stratified agency, socialization, and opportunity. Socialization is the intentions instilled by parents, agency is the mental processes (although they also so the family’s means to realize transition), and opportunity is how they actually achieve the goals (timing-wise) they were socialized/hopeful to do. To test these concepts, they use the Generations and Gender Programme which has 3 waves, but they only use observations who were 18-35 during wave I. They find support for all three measures, although the measure agency through parent’s ses impact on the likelihood of achieving the outcome (marriage, education, moving out, parenthood). To measure agency, they include an interaction term between intention and parent’s SES. They find high SES kids were more likely to realize their intentions than low -ses kids. High ses kids were more likely to delay adulthood and ses predicted intentions.
Furstenberg 2008 – THe Intersections of Social Class and the transition to adulthood
conjectures about how social class impacts the transition to adulthood. He doesn’t cite any studies or present real data. He answers the questions why and for whom adulthood has delayed:education expanded, marriage delayed and relationships too, and parents reaalize that kids are growing up in a different environment than they did. Inequalities compound, starting from birth and going into the institutional experiences (school, family, neighborhoods, work) that teens transition into. He makes some bold claims about low-income parents less likley to plan their kids. The delay that rich kids get from school helps their career prospects. Finally, he talks about macro issues which influence this: health care, education costs, work requirements, workplace opportunities
Goldrick-Rab 2006 – Following their Every Move: An investigation of social-class differences in college pathways
investigates whether college trajectories once students begin college differs by social class. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) she examines students’ transcripts to test whether they take breaks or change institutions throughout college (this gives her four categories: fluid, traditional, pause at same uni, pause different unis.) She makes some weird analytical decisions, like only including people who start at four-year colleges, dropping American Indians, and using a Hispanic/Black category without enough respondents to actually conduct multinomial logistic regression. She find SES predicts changes to unis and pauses, which suggests that social background influences opportunity once students are in school. She points to finances as the issue and backs that up with other research showing how finances cause students to have to pause/change insitutions. GPA is also a very significant predictor.
Kariya and Rosenbaum 2003 – Stratified Incentives and Life Course Behaviors
conduct a fascinating study utilizing a period effect (Japan’s drastic education reforms during the 1980s) to see how it impact student motivation/work style, television consumption, and inequality in general. In Japan, job selection is done by student rankings. Even if a student is at a less prestigious school, their performance can allow them to access the upper echelons of tertiary education. However, Japan had a crisis of “exam hell” where students were overworking. They decide to reform their education to promote “choice” (also to help with creativity). This included choice of studies (decreasing specific exam requirements), reduce demands (choice of activities), choice of learning content, and make collee a choice. They utilize 3 surveys (HS and Beyond in Japan 1980) and another 2 surveys of high schools in 1979 and 1997. They test whether these peer groups had diferent outcomes. They find that the changes did allow the hardest working students to reduce their workload, but so too did the least achieving students. Japan has a tiered high school system and in the lowest schools kids worked significantly less (homework hours) and increased their tv consumption significantly. Tier 2, just below the top, also saw significant reduces in homework time and increases in tv time. These reforms also excacerbated inequality, as children from parents with low SES jobs or low education saw the greatest changes to their work/free time habits. In sum, incentive structures that decrease standards at all level increase inequality for two reasons. Students will take on the habitus of their families which doesn’t support the appropriate cultural capital, and once these structural conditions become recognized by employers, they shifted their selection criteria to college graduates only, instead of high school graduates.
Lareau 2011 – Unequal Childhoods:Class, Race, and Family Life
Concerted cultivation vs natural growth. the change in preference by major institutions (healthcare, education, etc.) is a period effect. Previously, natural growth was thought to be the better form of parenting. She conducts interviews with the families ten years after the original study. The results are about what was expected. Middle class families sent their kids to college and lower class kids struggled to help their own families or stay on their feet. This book confirms that lower class kids must grow up more quickly – in fact, their parents expect them to act like adults (have responsibility) as soon as they hit 18. In fact, she said that middle class kids seem younger during young adulthood while lower class kids already seem like adults (it was reversed when they were kids).
Bourdieu argues that in key areas, social space is stratified—some groups will be excluded and others included (and some will exclude themselves). He draws an analogy with a card game: there are fields that provide both the “rules of the game” and the social space wherein variations in capital exist. Bourdieu focuses on the intersection of the cards being dealt and the skill with which players play. 8 He emphasizes that the nature of the game is arbitrary and the slots at the top are limited.
Instead, he would point out that the number of elite slots in society is limited. Thus, any effort to spread an elite practice to all members of the society would result in the practice being devalued and replaced by a different sorting mechanism. In this sense, his model suggests that inequality is a perpetual characteristic of social groups. In any given interaction, however, Bourdieu stresses that the outcome is uncertain. Strategies may not pay off. In addition, he notes that individuals with a similar set of resources may differ in the skill with which they use their capital.
Smith, Crosnoe, and Chao 2016 – Family background and contemporary changes in young adults’ school-work transitions and family formation in the United States
use both verions of the NLSY (79 and 97) to test whether the pathway to adulthood has changed across time and whether those changes are reflected by social class. They use event history analysis testing four outcomes: marriage, school completion, entry into the workforce, and parenthood. They find that there are differences in timing across cohorts and that these differences are reflected by social class. Upper class students are extending their education and delaying their entry into the workforce (as compared to NLSY 79). They are also delaying their entry into parenthood. Marriage delayed as well for both dis and advantaged kids. Childcare only changed significantly for advantaged youth, disadvantaged youth continued to have children at the same time as before. Disadvantaged youth are also delaying their workforce entry and extending their education, but not quite at the same rate as advantaged kids.
Staff and Mortimer 2008 – Social class background and the school-to-work transition
test the pathways high school students take in relation to working during high school and how these pathways influence later life success (income and tertiary degrees). They find two dominant pathways: casual working during high school with greater tertiary success and rigorous high school working with lower tertiary success. Kids whose parents have bachelor degrees (both) tended to receive degrees at much higher rates, but work disparities exist for both groups. Casual working during high school improved chances for both. Grueling work during high school reduced chances for both. Work histories could reflect a selection effecct or could causally influence the life patterns these kdis have.
