Tertiary education expansion and access for disadvantaged women in Brazil and Mexico

This paper seeks to identify if women from vulnerable, socioeconomic and ethnic/racially, backgrounds have been benefited from this process through the Maximally Maintained Hypothesis developed by Raftery and Hout (1993), in which vulnerable or less advantageous groups can access education only after the demand of the most advantaged group has been met. Using data from the National Household Surveys from Brazil (PNAD) and Mexico (ENIGH) both countries were studied for the 2004 and 2014 periods in order to observe the changes occurring through time, with a focus on the women population. As a result, this study found two different dynamics of inclusion: while in Brazil higher socioeconomic inclusion has been attained, there is a persistent stratification by race in tertiary education with an underrepresentation of non-white participants. On the other hand, Mexico has advanced in terms of including the population that describes itself as indigenous or understands an indigenous language, nonetheless underrepresentation from those that speak an indigenous language persist and socioeconomic stratification remains a factor of exclusion.

Predicting Mobility: Who Is Forced to Move?

We use the 2013 American Housing Survey to examine which households are more likely to experience a forced move compared to a voluntary move. We examine how household vulnerability varies by racial and socioeconomic stratification, as well as other household demographics among homeowners and renters. We analyze household-level predictors of experiencing an inclusively defined forced move, including moves caused by disasters, private and government displacement, and eviction (for renters) or foreclosure (for homeowners). Comparing an inclusive definition of displacement to voluntary mobility, we find that lower levels of education, income, and the presence of a disabled household member increase the likelihood of displacement for homeowners. Among renters, the presence of children, older households, and being native-born increase the odds of displacement, but a female-headed household reduces them. When examining type-specific displacement, we find variation in who is most susceptible to experience a forced move.

Reassignment Policies and School Stratification

School choice is expanding, but the majority of students in countries like the United States still attend the school associated with their residential address. We study assignment policies and reassignments of students, where students apply to attend a magnet school or request to transfer to another school within the public school system. Policymakers and researchers have expressed concerns that these type of reassignment programs could increase racial and socioeconomic stratification and cause an imbalance of resources across schools. We provide evidence from the Wake County Public School System in North Carolina. Our focus is on changes in racial and socioeconomic stratification across schools relative to the existing degree of stratification that exists in the district through its assignment via schools’ attendance boundaries. The reassignment programs available in this district reduce stratification in terms of race, socioeconomic status, student need, and student ability. To place our results in context, we conduct several simulations to compare the observed changes in stratification to what changes are possible. The effects on stratification are similar to what would be expected if students move between schools without regard to school composition, and the effects are small relative to the largest increases or decreases in stratification that could be expected given the volume of reassignments observed in these data. Thus, the reassignment programs we study do not increase stratification in terms of race, socioeconomic status, or student need/ability, but they also do not reduce stratification to a particularly large degree. Our results speak to school choice programs that can be characterized as controlled choice programs in which the district places constraints on moves between schools.

Lifestyles of the rich and faithful: Confronting classism in Christian mission

Classism is collective prejudice formed into a system of inequality that is based on socioeconomic stratification; it is undergirded by embedded cultural narratives surrounding the poor, and then instituted by the powers that be at the expense of the poor. If Christian mission does not challenge classism, then it is complicit in it and thus undermines the work of the gospel. This article proposes an evaluative tool to help align personal lifestyles and organizational practices with an image of Christ among the classes.