Constraints in the Demand for Education: What Can we Learn from Subjective Assessments?

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga V. Sorokina
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Credit Constraints ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Literature ◽  
Demand For Education ◽  
Subjective Assessments

Abstract While the large disparities in educational attainment by socioeconomic status in the United States point towards the importance of credit constraints, there is no consensus in the economic literature regarding their pervasiveness. To evaluate how subjective information can enhance our understanding of the role of credit constraints in education, I focus on NLSY79 respondents' assessments of financial obstacles to schooling. About 12 percent of young adults in the data expect to underinvest in education because of financial reasons or the need to work. Using this information in a regression model of educational attainment shows that it provides valuable behavioral insights, above and beyond standard measures of income and family background.

scholarly journals Can students themselves narrow the socioeconomic-status-based achievement gap through their own persistence and learning time?

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haigen Huang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Achievement Gap ◽  
International Student ◽  
Linear Models ◽  
Student Assessment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Learning Time ◽  
International Student Assessment

Despite decades of educational reforms, the achievement gap based on socioeconomic status (SES) persists in the United States. Not only does the SES-based achievement gap persist, it has also been widening. This study focused on the role of students, hypothesizing that students might reduce the SES-based achievement gap by increasing their learning time and persistence. I used both ANOVA and two-level hierarchical linear models (HLM) to analyze the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) United States data. The findings suggested that students viewing themselves to be persistent were likely to perform better than those viewing themselves to be less persistent. Also increased time learning in school was associated with increased achievement. However, high-SES students generally spent more time learning in school and viewed themselves to be more persistent. Thus learning time and persistence were not likely to address the SES constraint on achievement for a majority of low-SES students unless schools provided them extra classes and learning opportunities.

scholarly journals Sibling Similarity in Education Across and Within Societies

Demography ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Grätz ◽  
Kieron J. Barclay ◽  
Øyvind N. Wiborg ◽  
Torkild H. Lyngstad ◽  
Aleksi Karhula ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Parental Education ◽  
Family Background ◽  
The United States ◽  
School Grades ◽  
Sibling Correlations ◽  
Sibling Similarity ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The extent to which siblings resemble each other measures the omnibus impact of family background on life chances. We study sibling similarity in cognitive skills, school grades, and educational attainment in Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We also compare sibling similarity by parental education and occupation within these societies. The comparison of sibling correlations across and within societies allows us to characterize the omnibus impact of family background on education across social landscapes. Across countries, we find larger population-level differences in sibling similarity in educational attainment than in cognitive skills and school grades. In general, sibling similarity in education varies less across countries than sibling similarity in earnings. Compared with Scandinavian countries, the United States shows more sibling similarity in cognitive skills and educational attainment but less sibling similarity in school grades. We find that socioeconomic differences in sibling similarity vary across parental resources, countries, and measures of educational success. Sweden and the United States show greater sibling similarity in educational attainment in families with a highly educated father, and Finland and Norway show greater sibling similarity in educational attainment in families with a low-educated father. We discuss the implications of our results for theories about the impact of institutions and income inequality on educational inequality and the mechanisms that underlie such inequality.

The whiteness of white-collar crime in the United States: Examining the role of race in a culture of elite white-collar offending

2019 ◽  
pp. 136248061986431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracy Sohoni ◽  
Melissa Rorie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Social Isolation ◽  
White Collar Crime ◽  
White Collar ◽  
The United States ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Cultural Adaptations ◽  
Mainstream Media

While the role of race has been heavily scrutinized in terms of minority involvement in crime, it has remained largely invisible for Whites despite indications that Whites are overrepresented as offenders in elite white-collar crimes. We propose a theoretical model detailing how “whiteness” encourages cultural adaptations conducive to elite white-collar crime in contemporary US society. Many middle- and upper-class US Whites live in environments of relative social isolation, both geographically (in terms of schools and neighborhoods) and culturally (as mainstream media largely reflect the lived realities of middle- and upper-class Whites). When this social isolation is combined with financial advantage, it serves to block the development of empathy toward outgroups and increases feelings of individual entitlement, which leads to the formation of crime-specific cultural frames that include neutralizations and justifications for elite white-collar crime. We argue that whiteness plays a role that is independent from (but exacerbated by) socioeconomic status, and is an important contributor to the generative worlds from which many white-collar criminals emanate.

scholarly journals In the Name of the Son (and the Daughter): Intergenerational Mobility in the United States, 1850 –1940

2015 ◽  
Vol 105 (8) ◽  
pp. 2695-2724 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Olivetti ◽  
M. Daniele Paserman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Marriage Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Regional Disparities ◽  
Development Trends

This paper estimates historical intergenerational elasticities between fathers and children of both sexes in the United States using a novel empirical strategy. The key insight of our approach is that the information about socioeconomic status conveyed by first names can be used to create pseudo-links across generations. We find that both father-son and father-daughter elasticities were flat during the nineteenth century, increased sharply between 1900 and 1920, and declined slightly thereafter. We discuss the role of regional disparities in economic development, trends in inequality and returns to human capital, and the marriage market in explaining these patterns. (JEL D63, J12, J16, J24, J62, N31, N32)

scholarly journals The Importance of Improving Educational Attainment for Dementia Prevalence Trends from 2000-2014, among Older non-Hispanic Black and White Americans

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark D Hayward ◽  
Mateo P Farina ◽  
Yuan S Zhang ◽  
Jung Ki Kim ◽  
Eileen M Crimmins
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Downward Trend ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Logistic Regression Models ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Dementia Prevalence ◽  
Using Data

Abstract Objectives While a number of studies have documented a notable decline in age-standardized prevalence in dementia in the U.S. population, relatively little is known about how dementia has declined for specific age and race groups, and the importance of changing educational attainment on the downward trend. We assess 1) how the trends in dementia prevalence may have differed across age and race groups and 2) the role of changing educational attainment in understanding these trends. Method This paper estimates a series of logistic regression models using data from the Health and Retirement Study (2000-2014) to assess the relative annual decline in dementia prevalence and the importance of improving educational attainment for non-Hispanic Whites and non-Hispanic Blacks. Results Consistent with other studies, we found significant declines in dementia for non-Hispanic Blacks and non-Hispanic Whites across this period. Nonetheless, these declines were not uniform across age and race groups. Non-Hispanic Blacks aged 65-74 had the steepest decline in this period. We also found that improved educational attainment in the population was fundamentally important in understanding declining dementia prevalence in the United States. Discussion This study shows the importance of improvement in educational attainment in the early part of the 20 th century to understand the downward trend in dementia prevalence in the United States from 2000 to 2014.

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