scholarly journals Italian PhD students at the borders: the relationship between family background and international mobility

Genus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Tocchioni ◽  
Alessandra Petrucci

AbstractPrevious literature has suggested that PhD students’ mobility has become a fundamental step during doctoral studies, both for training purposes and for creating transnational research networks. In recent years, there has been a significant increase in migration of highly educated and highly skilled Italians. Most studies concentrate on employment-related characteristics of researchers’ and scientists’ mobility, largely neglecting other topics, such as family background characteristics of those who decide to study and go abroad. Using the Istat Survey on occupational conditions of PhD holders conducted in 2014 and 2018 in Italy, along with modelling using multinomial logistic regression analyses, we aim to investigate the relationship between family background characteristics and mobility during PhD studies according to different types of international stay. Our results show that both parental education and mother’s economic activity are related to the propensity for studying abroad among PhD candidates, whereas father’s social class seems to have a lower impact on this decision. The gap in doctoral mobility among PhD students with respect to socio-economic status seems also to vary according to the different types of stay abroad. Overall, our findings intend to shed light on potential disparities related to studying abroad among PhD students and their links to family background, which may have future repercussions on students’ occupational prospects.

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (8) ◽  
pp. 398-405
Author(s):  
Takuma Ofuchi ◽  
Aye Myat Myat Zaw ◽  
Bang-on Thepthien

Currently, e-cigarettes are the most popular tobacco product among adolescents. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and use of cigarettes, e-cigarettes, and dual use in a sample of adolescents in Bangkok, Thailand. The sample comprises 6167 students from 48 schools (grades 9, 11, and vocational year 2) who participated in the 2019 round of the Behavior Surveillance Survey. History of 11 ACEs was used to calculate a cumulative ACE score (range 0-11). Multinomial logistic regression was used to assess the relationship between history of ACEs and smoking. In the sample, 7.0% reported using e-cigarettes only and 9.5% used e-cigarettes and cigarettes (dual use). After controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, history of ACEs was associated with increased odds of dual use. The odds of cigarette, e-cigarette, and dual use was significantly greater if the adolescent had a history of ≥4 ACEs. Special attention is needed to prevent smoking of different types among those with a history of ACEs.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1337-1403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoë Kuehn ◽  
Pedro Landeras

Abstract Students from more advantageous family backgrounds tend to perform better than those from less advantageous backgrounds. But it is not clear that these students exert more effort. We build a model of students, schools, and employers to study the interaction of family background and effort exerted by the student in the education process. Two factors turn out to be key in determining the relationship between effort and family background: (i) the student’s attitude toward risk and (ii) how the student’s marginal productivity of effort depends on her family background. We show that when the degree of risk aversion is relatively low (high) compared to the sensitivity of the marginal productivity of effort, students from more advantageous family backgrounds exert more (less) effort. Empirically, we find that if parental education was reduced from holding a university degree to incomplete compulsory education, primary and secondary school students would exert around 21–23% less effort (approximately equal to a reduction of 2 hours weekly in homework). For primary school students we also find that marginal productivities of effort are higher for those from less advantageous family backgrounds.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 124-129
Author(s):  
Björn Quanjer ◽  
Kristina Thompson

While in modern, high-income populations, obesity is associated with being from a low socio-economic background, this may not have always been the case. We test the relationship between obesity and educational level (as a proxy for socio-economic status) in a historical cohort of Dutch military conscripts, from the conscription years 1950–1979. We find that in the 1950s cohort, being in tertiary education was significantly associated with an increased likelihood of being overweight. In contrast, in the 1970s cohort, being in tertiary education was significantly associated with a decreased likelihood of being overweight. We find evidence that the prevalence of obesity remained broadly similar among more highly educated men, while it increased among men of a lower educational level. This likely contributed to the overall rise in the obesity rate. Our findings echo other studies that find a crossover in education’s relationship to BMI as populations become wealthier and obesity rates rise.


Author(s):  
Kathryn Duckworth ◽  
Ricardo Sabates

The paper investigates the relationship between mother's education and her parenting using data from the child supplement of the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS). By considering data across generations, our dataset allows us to estimate the size of the bias in the relationship between education and parenting from failing to account for background characteristics, early cognitive development and mother's own parenting experiences. The subjects were 1,182 longitudinally sampled mothers of 1,879 children aged between 3 and 18 years old and divided approximately equally across gender (51% sons, 49% daughters). Controlling for a wide range of family background variables and mother's own achievement prior to 16, results indicate a confounding bias of 73% for cognitive stimulation and 89% for emotional support. This confounding bias is larger for daughters than for sons. Even after the inclusion of a large set of controls, a small effect of maternal education on parenting, assessed in terms of the provision of a cognitively stimulating environment, remains statistically significant but only for sons. Although educational effects estimated here suffer from downwards bias owing to under-representation of older mothers within the data, some unobserved factors could remain as a source of bias.


2020 ◽  
pp. 019251212092711
Author(s):  
Miquel Pellicer ◽  
Ragui Assaad ◽  
Caroline Krafft ◽  
Colette Salemi

The educated have figured prominently in protests and elections in several Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries. The dominant explanation for this pattern centers on grievances and unfulfilled aspirations due to low education returns in the MENA. However, the pattern may simply reflect the unequal participation observed in many democracies where education provides skills and resources that facilitate political participation. This article compares the roles of skills and grievances in explaining the relationship between education and youth political participation during and after the Arab Spring. We use youth surveys with detailed data on education and political participation from Egypt and Tunisia. We control for parental education and family background to partially account for the potential of background to drive the education and participation relationship. Overall, our results are consistent with the skill channel and lend little support to the grievance channel. Our findings raise concerns about the exclusion of uneducated youth from both unconventional and conventional political participation in MENA politics.


Author(s):  
Naz Onel ◽  
Avinandan Mukherjee

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine five different types of eco-sensitive behaviours separately and understand if determinants of these behaviours vary depending on the type of action being performed. Design/methodology/approach – The study investigates factors influencing five different eco-sensitive behaviours by empirically testing the effects of socio-economic status (SES), gender, age and environmental values. Theoretically guided hypotheses and models were formulated and tested with multiple linear regression models by employing a data set from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) 2010 General Social Survey. Findings – Results conclude that different types of behaviour have different predictors. While age differences only explain recycling cans and bottles, gender difference explains buying pesticide-free fruits/vegetables and avoiding environmentally harmful products. Values, on the other hand, predict all five eco-behaviours. Driving less and saving water for environmental reasons were least explained by the examined predictors. Originality/value – These results contribute to untangling the confusing research evidence on the effects of SES, age, gender and environmental values on different environmental behaviours and on the relationship between them by examining each behaviour separately.


ILR Review ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 418-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark C. Berger

Using Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Men, the author of this paper examines the relationship between predicted future earnings for five broad fields of study and college students' choice of major. Conditional logit models of major choice that incorporate alternative predicted earnings variables are specified and estimated. The results indicate that, holding family background characteristics constant, individuals are likely to choose majors offering greater streams of future earnings rather than, as some have argued, majors with higher beginning earnings at the time of the choice. It is also found that earnings profiles corrected for self-selection bias have flattened for more recent graduates in business, liberal arts, and education. The life-cycle earnings in these disciplines appear to be more severely depressed than those in science and engineering.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manyu Lan

Abstract Objectives This study aimed to clarify the relationship between childhood family background and female fertility intentions in adulthood, fertility intentions for a second child under the universal two-child policy, and ideal fertility intentions under no birth restrictions. Methods Using 3388 participants sampled from the 2016 China Labor-force Dynamics Survey, I analyzed the relationship between women’s family background in childhood and their fertility intentions in adulthood. Zero-inflated Poisson regression and multinomial logistic regression models were used to determine the predictors of women’s intended number of children under different policy conditions. Results Women with more siblings intended to have more children. Parents’ education had a negative effect on daughters’ fertility intentions. There was also a cohort effect in female fertility intentions. Conclusions These empirical results suggest women’s fertility intentions are associated with their family background in childhood. A better socioeconomic status in childhood means women have moderate reproductive desires in adulthood.


Author(s):  
Erika Anne Leicht

Despite their stated intention of providing equal educational opportunity for all, many democratic countries separate their students into different classes or even different schools based on their demonstrated academic ability and likely future career. This practice is often referred to as “tracking or “ability grouping.” This study aims to determine whether different types of educational tracking have different effects on students’ academic achievement. Specifically, this study investigates whether disparities in educational achievement between students of highly educated versus minimally educated parents are greater in countries that practice more explicit and complete forms of tracking. It also explores tracking’s effects on average achievement and overall achievement variance. Analysis of data from the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) indicates that tracking generally does increase score disparities between children from different educational backgrounds. Tracking is also associated with higher overall variance of scores. At the same time, tracking may have a slight positive effect on average achievement. However, results are not consistent across all countries, and patterns are different in different subject areas and for different types of tracking. The results of this study neither condemn nor extol tracking. Rather, they indicate that tracking plays a relatively minor role in determining the quality and equity of an education system.


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