Occupational Mobility during South Africa's Industrial Take‐Off

In the absence of historical income or education data, the change in occupations over time can be used as a measure of mobility. This paper investigates intergenerational occupational mobility using a novel genealogical dataset for settler South Africa, spanning its transition from an agricultural to an early industrialised society (1800‐1909). We identify fathers and sons for whom we have complete information on occupational attainment. We follow a two‐generation discrete approach to measure changes in both absolute and relative mobility over time. Consistent with qualitative evidence of a shift away from agriculture as the economy's dominant sector, we see the farming class shrinking and the skilled and professional classes growing. Controlling for changes in the structure of the labour market over time, we find increasing mobility, becoming significant after the discovery of minerals in 1868. We find this mobility particularly for semi‐skilled workers but virtually no improved mobility for sons of farmers. We also test hypotheses related to the mobility prospects for first‐born sons and sons of immigrants.     

Intergenerational education transmission in China: The gender dimension

This paper explores gender differences in intergenerational patterns of education attainment in China. Using the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) survey for 2016, we find that intergenerational ‘persistence’, as reflected in high regression and correlation coefficients between an individual's and their parents' education levels, is higher for females than males for the entire sample and for each of four age cohorts. This result stems primarily from the relative lack of upward mobility among females from families with low levels of education, as confirmed by a series of educational mobility matrices and a multinomial logistic regression analysis. The results offer novel insights into gender differences in the unequal transmission of education across generations, with significant implications for gender inequality more broadly in Chinese society.     

New “useless education theory”: Highly educated parents' expectations for their children's education—Evidence from the one-child policy

Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) 2010 and a strictly implemented one-child policy as a quasi-experiment, this paper analyses the changes in parents' educational expectations of their children and the underlying mechanisms in a fuzzy regression discontinuity framework. It was found that one-child policy compliers have lower educational expectations for their children after acquiring an advanced education than those who did not. The finding remains valid after robustness analysis and placebo tests. Combined with an examination of the intergenerational effects of birth, this finding may be related to parents' assessment of and responses to educational returns and equality of educational opportunities. It was also found that parents with lower educational attainment in the high-income group have higher educational expectations than those with higher educational attainment, while for those with lower income, there is no significant difference between higher educational attainment and otherwise, which indirectly verifies the causal inference of this paper. The finding of this study explains the new “useless education theory” and provides a new perspective for understanding the intergenerational transmission of education.     

Maternal education and child health outcomes in South Africa: A panel data analysis

This study empirically assesses the relationship between mothers’ education and child health using continuous and binary proxies of child health outcomes. A panel, using four waves of the National Income Dynamic Study and a battery of estimation techniques, was employed. The results suggest that maternal education plays a large and significant role in explaining child health outcomes in South Africa. Our results also suggest that maternal education is relevant in respect to stunted growth (stunting). However, the effects of maternal education vary along races, implying levels of inequality. The effects are stronger in the black and coloured populations, possibly due to educational deficits. This suggests a need in improving the educational opportunities for these groups. We suggest that maternal education can significantly contribute to reducing the high degree of inequality in South Africa.     

Race, culture, and skill: Interracial wage differences among African Americans, Latinos, and whites

This article examines the interrelationships among race, culture, skill, and the distribution of wages. I utilize a three-equation system to explore this process: skill is a multidimensional productive attribute measured by years of education and work effort; educational attainment is a function of class background and individual effort; and individual wage rates are a function of skill and class background. By further assuming that effort is differentially distributed across individuals and social groups, I am able to estimate reduced form equations for educational and earnings attainment, where both equations are functions of the class backgrounds and race of individuals. The collective results of this article challenge the conventional wisdom among economists that African American and Latino job skills are of a lower quality than white job skills. To the extent that effort is an important element of worker skill, our results suggest that neither African American nor Latino labor is of lower quality than white labor. The results regarding differences between African Americans and whites in educational attainment, i.e., African Americans are able to translate a given level of resources into higher levels of educational attainment, reaffirm previous findings in the literature. The results on Latino versus white educational attainment are novel. Additionally, unlike previous research, this article connects racial differences in the skill acquisition process to the economics of discrimination.     

父代关系与代际收入流动：基于教育和就业的视角

文章运用计量方法分析了父代关系与中国代际收入流动性的关系。我们用2010年中国家庭追踪调查中父代为了子女上学和就业“找关系”来衡量寻租行为,通过工具变量法和分位回归法探讨了父代关系对不同人群的影响。结果显示,为子女就学（就业）找关系对于代际收入流动有一定的促进作用;进一步,分位回归和不同社会区域特征的影响揭示,教育和就业领域的“寻租市场”远远不是完全有效市场,在这一市场中所进行的寻租行为进一步加剧了教育和就业资源在城乡之间、不同收入阶层之间原本就存在的分布不均。教育资源均等化和劳动力市场的进一步市场化对于减少为了子代福利而进行的寻租腐败行为、以及建设机会均等的和谐社会具有重要意义。     

The effects of China's higher education expansion on urban and rural intergenerational mobility

This study examines the heterogeneous effect of higher education on intergenerational mobility of rural and urban residents before and after China's higher education expansion (CHEE). Drawing on data from seven waves of the China General Social Survey (CGSS), we find that, although the overall effect of higher education decreases on alleviating intergenerational persistence after CHEE, undergraduate or postgraduate education can still significantly promote rural intergenerational mobility in terms of occupational-socioeconomic status. However, higher education appears to have changed from assisting social mobility to advancing intergenerational persistence in urban areas after CHEE. The propensity score matching method was used to mitigate sample selection bias, and all the findings were validated by several robustness checks, including placebo and Oster's (2019) omitted-variable tests.     

Internal Migration of Blacks in South Africa: An Application of the Roy Model

This study investigates the internal migration of black males in South Africa over the period after the formal end of Apartheid using the 1996 census data. The two issues of our primary interests are the following: (i) whether migration patterns of black individuals are consistent with the income‐maximising hypothesis as related to the destination choice; and (ii) whether the redistribution of human capital is detected in internal migration. The results from conditional logit regressions on choices among individuals in 318 districts show that individuals prefer districts with higher expected wages, conditional on other regional characteristics. In addition, there exist differing preferences on the share of population with post‐secondary education by individuals with commensurate educational attainments. Black individuals with post‐secondary education tend to migrate into areas with a higher share of population with post‐secondary education and vice versa, which confirms the divergence of human capital levels across districts.     

Export expansion and intergenerational education mobility: Evidence from China

This paper investigates the impact of China's export expansion during 2000–2007 on the local intergenerational education mobility. We construct prefecture-level export shocks, by exploiting variations in national cross-industry export changes and cross-prefecture industrial employment. Empirical results suggest that prefectures experiencing larger export shocks are more likely to have higher intergenerational education mobility. The baseline results stand when we use alternative measures for educational outcomes, consider the migration situations, or include more controls. Using the intergenerational mobility framework proposed by Becker et al. (2018), we explain and empirically test how income effect and substitution effect of export expansions influence education mobility. The mechanism testing suggests that the income effect is the dominant force underlying the results.     

Contributing to the African Renaissance vision: The role of South African higher education institutions

President Mbeki is emphasising the vision of an African Renaissance in many of his public addresses. Many multifaceted inputs are required to realise this vision, and human resources development is one of the cornerstones of this ideal. South African higher education institutions could play a major role in this quest by sharing their expertise to upgrade the scientific, economic and educational competencies of all people in Africa. Data analysis shows considerable potential for attracting students from Africa, especially from the Southern African Development Community, to study at South African institutions. Current initiatives for facilitating intellectual mobility across the country's borders lack vision, however. Academic exchange programmes in other countries could serve as models to kick-start the contributions of higher education institutions in South Africa in realising Mr Mbeki's vision for an African Renaissance.     

Racial Differences in Civic Participation and Charitable Giving: The Confounding Effects of Educational Attainment and Unmeasured Ability

In this paper we use human capital theory to follow the links from educational attainment to civic engagement, and to other pro-social behaviors such as charitable giving and volunteering, and in so doing we offer a cautionary explanation for observed racial differences in civic participation, giving, and volunteering. Our argument is that when, in a racialized society such as the U.S., the costs and benefits of education differ by race, and when innate ability is an unmeasured source of heterogeneity across individuals, controlling for educational attainment and not for ability will create spurious race effects in empirical studies of behaviors that depend on both education and ability. Because (1) blacks at any level of educational attainment are predicted to be of higher average ability than equally educated whites and (2) higher ability is associated with higher levels of civic participation, a regression of civic participation on educational attainment and race will produce a positive coefficient on the dummy variable that takes on a value of one if the subject is African American. Using data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, we find strong support for the interpretation of race effects as spurious artifacts of having included data on educational attainment without measures of innate ability.     

THE GROWTH OF THE KOREAN MIDDLE CLASS AND ITS SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

The middle class in the Republic of Korea grew quickly in the course of the country's rapid economic growth. This paper analyzes the characteristics of Korea's new and old middle classes by examining the socioeconomic conditions, experience of mobility, and social consciousness of the people in these classes Analysis shows that many people presently in these well‐off classes have experienced intra‐ and intergenerational mobility. While the old middle class is greatly open to both inter‐ and intragenerational inflow, the new middle class is close to intragenerational inflow. The probability of reaching the new middle class is greatly affected by one's level of education, however, education level largely depends on one's class origin. It is also shown that the Korean new middle class has a comparatively progressive social consciousness. However, people's political attitudes are determined not by one's position in the class structure but by nonclass factors, such as one's age, education level, and native region.     

Robust Estimates of Changes in Poverty and Inequality in Post‐Independence Namibia

We estimate changes in the distribution of household consumption expenditure in Namibia since independence in 1990 and the effects on poverty. To produce comparability between two household surveys, we use survey‐matching techniques, and we apply the framework of stochastic dominance to test the robustness of our results. The results reveal a significant decrease in the poverty headcount over the period and small but insignificant decreases in the country's extremely high levels of inequality. Decomposition analysis shows that poverty reduction in Namibia is largely driven by growth in mean incomes rather than redistribution. Even so, there have been important changes in inequality among different social groups especially as educational attainment has replaced ethnicity as the main determinant of between‐group inequality.     

中国居民家庭收入代际传递性分析

本文通过对父子收入代际弹性和家庭收入代际弹性的研究,发现子女收入很大程度上受到父亲收入或家庭收入的影响,证明了中国居民收入代际之间存在着较为明显的传递效应,特别是低收入群体。通过内外因分析,可以发现教育成为影响中国居民收入代际传递现象的重要因素。教育是一种重要的代际流动机制,个人教育水平提高和教育环境的公平可以使低收入群体有机会流向更高收入阶层。     

People＇s Mobility and Guanxi Networks： A Case Study

The increase in the movement of people from rural to urban areas since the mid-1980s represents the largest labor migration ever experienced in China. Because migration is a process of selection, it is imperative that the major dynamics determining the selection are studied. What are the critical characteristics of migrants that help them to realize their mobility from rural areas to urban areas？ While educational attainment, gender, age, marital status and personal skills are important variables in the selection process, the present paper examines how social networks （guanxi connections） play a significant role in the process of migration selection in China. A case study from one of the northern villages in rural China is used to explore how social networks have shaped and given meaning to migration. The present paper elaborates on how people＇s social mobility has coincided with and been reinforced by people＇s physical mobility.     

Social Mobility in Nineteenth Century Rural Sweden – A Micro Level Analysis

Abstract

Pre-industrial rural societies have often been pictured as stationary and immobile both in geographical and social terms. In the last decades this image has begun to change, especially as regards geographical mobility, while our knowledge of social mobility of rural pre-industrial Europe is still rudimentary. This study focuses on social attainment and mobility in a rural community of nineteenth-century southern Sweden, making use of high quality micro-level demographic and socioeconomic data. We show that intergenerational social mobility was quite frequent. Downward mobility was more prevalent than upward, and also increased over time. Social attainment and mobility were determined by a combination of inherited factors and individual agency. Social origin was of major importance, and so was the social origin of the spouse, which points to the crucial role played by partner selection in determining individual social outcome. Availability of networks as measured by place of birth also played a role in social achievement.     

Intergenerational transfer of human capital and its impact on income mobility: Evidence from China

This paper analyzes theoretically and empirically the impact of intergenerational transmission of human capital on the income mobility in China. We use a three-period overlapping-generations (OLG) model to show that the human capital transfer plays a remarkable role in determining the parent-to-offspring investment in human capital and the intergenerational elasticity of income. We then estimate a simultaneous equations model (SEM) using the 1989–2009 China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data to verify our theoretical predictions. The results show that (i) human capital, measured by health and education, is directly transmitted from one generation to the next, reflecting the parent-induced inequality of development opportunities among offspring in China; (ii) the estimated intergenerational income elasticity increases from 0.429 to 0.481 when the direct transfer of human capital is accounted for, suggesting that omitting this mechanism would overestimate China's income mobility. Our findings provide policy implications on strengthening human capital investments among the disadvantaged groups, reinforcing reforms that promote equality of opportunity, and improving the efficiency of labor markets in China.     

Families in the Gautreaux Housing Mobility Program: Perceptions and Responses to the U.S. Political Economy

This study examines how perceptions of shifts in the U.S. political economy such as those associated with the Great Migration(s), the Civil Rights Movement, and various housing policies influenced the lives of three generations of African American families and children. This study looks at the experiences of families living in Chicago, Illinois who participated in the Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program, which was a direct result of the Civil Rights Movement. A qualitative analysis is employed that analyzes the perceptions of Gautreaux participants (N?=?25) about how changes in the U.S. political economy affect their life course development and the life courses of their parents (N?=?50) and children (N?=?72). Added to the perceptions of Gautreaux participants is an intergenerational analysis of educational achievement and occupational attainment in the context of a changing U.S. political economy from the Jim Crow era to the post-Civil Rights era. The findings suggest that in many cases participants perceived expanding opportunities but also recognized the persistence of structural constraints. They identified several structural changes that they believed influenced their families’ educational and occupational opportunities: industrial jobs in the North, civil rights protests by African Americans against employment and housing discrimination (and the resulting policies like “affirmative action”), as well as increased government funding for job training and education. The intergenerational analysis of educational and occupational achievement revealed that each Gautreaux generation has higher rates of college attendance and post-high school training, as well as a greater range of occupations. I argue that the interplay between changing structural forces and bundled acts of resistance over the three generations created pathways that significantly improved life course development within and across the generations.