It is frequently stated that higher education is our nation’s greatest vehicle for social mobility. But despite the dramatic expansion of the postsecondary system since the 1940s, social mobility rates have remained stagnant and significant socioeconomic disparities in college attainment have persisted. Three explanations of this phenomenon appear most prominently in the literature. The first is that low-SES students are significantly less likely to be academically prepared for college. The second is that, even when college-ready, low-SES students are more likely to attend less selective or lower quality postsecondary institutions, decreasing their odds of attainment. The third is that socioeconomic background may exert an independent effect on the likelihood of postsecondary success, independent of background ability and institutional quality. Although each explanation is supported empirically, thus far limited attempts have been made to determine how these three factors interact across educational transitions. The purpose of this study is to estimate the relative impact of SES across transitions in students’ college-to-career pathways and explore how socioeconomic disparities in rates of student outcomes vary by student ability, institutional selectivity, and the combination of the two. Sequential logit modeling, a methodological staple in research on the effects of socioeconomic background on educational progression, is used to estimate the relative effect of SES on seven postsecondary transitions, from college application through graduate school attainment. The labor market outcomes of college graduates are also analyzed to determine whether family upbringing continues to influence students even after completing college. For both the postsecondary and labor market analyses, separate models are fit for different ability groups and institutional selectivity levels to investigate how these factors impact the magnitude of socioeconomic disparities in transitions. The results of this study suggest the need for a new conceptualization of this phenomenon, which is termed the Postsecondary Resource Trinity model. This model highlights the complex interaction between socioeconomic, academic, and institutional resources and suggests the need for a re-examination of the traditional perspective that the impact of SES declines steadily for all students as they progress through postsecondary. Implications of the model for policy, practice, and future research are discussed. / text

Most migration literature shows that skilled professionals have upward social mobility. But all of this literature is mostly about men. Plus, it focuses on individuals who are already on the job market. How immigrant women fare in the labor market and what about women who are still not incorporated into the high wage sector are seldom discussed. This research shows that professional migrant women face downward mobility. With limited job opportunities, as a result of having both visible barriers (legal constraints) and invisible barriers (culture, language, social network, credential and so on), the high-achieving migrant women become more "traditional" in the United States. Their roles as wives, mothers, part-time workers, volunteers take on a bigger aspect of their lives than their professional lives. In Taiwan they were far more active in the sphere of the economy, earning an independent income, but in the U.S. that is reversed. The experiences of these educated migrant women demonstrate that immigration does not uniformly empower migrants nor does it imply upward economic and social mobility. The study hopes to be the basis for further investigations of upper middle class migrant women in other areas in the America, and hopes to be the basis for future development to understand migrants’ downwards mobility in general. / text

This thesis examines the micro-process of social mobility in modern Hong Kong. It also studies Hong Kong's mobility regime in a conventional macro-comparative fashion. By applying the core model of social fluidity developed in the CASMIN (Comparative Analysis of Social Mobility in Industrial Nations) project to the mobility data collected in the 1989 Hong Kong Social Mobility Survey, I point to several distinctive features of Hong Kong's mobility regime. This exercise also allows me to engage in the ongoing debate concerning the degree of commonality and variation in relative mobility rates across industrial nations. Having made this macrocomparison, I turn to explore the micro-mobility process. Drawing on worklife data collected in the 1991-92 follow-up study, I consider the following issues: (a) typical mobility paths in Hong Kong, (b) how social networks facilitate the job search process, and (c) how career beginning affects subsequent mobility outcome. In this study, I also test and apply a new technique, Optimal Matching Analysis, which compares and classifies complete career sequences. Thus, apart from offering substantive findings on social mobility in Hong Kong, this thesis also seeks to make a technical contribution to the analysis of life course data.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 236-252).

Thesis--University of Wisconsin--Madison. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 292-295).

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University.

This thesis aims at systematically investigating intergenerational class mobility in contemporary China between 1996 and 2006, a period of time that largely overlaps the third decade of the country’s reform era. The study seeks answers to the following questions: 1) to what extent Chinese are found in class positions that differ from their class origins; 2) whether the amount of intergenerational mobility increased during the decade in question; 3) whether China has become a more equal society in terms of social mobility; 4) what are the overall patterns of social fluidity in China; and, 5) how mobility outcomes are affected by work-life mobility and various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, such as gender and the household registration (hukou) background.This research uses nationally representative survey data from three surveys – the Life Histories and Social Change Survey (1996) and the Chinese General Social Surveys (CGSS 2005 and CGSS 2006). I adopt the class structural approach and the EGP (Erikson-Goldthorpe-Protocarero) class schema. Various statistical methods are employed to explore the above issues: descriptive analysis for changes of China’s class structure, absolute rates of mobility and work-life mobility from the first job class to class of destination; log-linear and log-multiplicative analysis for trends and between-group differences in relative mobility; the Hauser-type density levels model and the core model of social fluidity for patterns of social fluidity; and the Stereotype Ordinal Regression Model for multivariate analysis of mobility outcomes. During the decade, China has become a more ‘mobile’ society in an upgraded structural context. While the relative size of the agricultural sector contracted substantially, there is a significant increase in the non-agricultural ‘room’ for occupational attainment, especially in the routine non-manual class and manual working classes. However, the analysis of relative mobility shows that the significant increase in total mobility and upward mobility has resulted mainly from structural changes. Between 1996 and 2006, the origin-destination association net of structural effects has been largely stable. Hence, the study provides little evidence in support of a more equal Chinese society. As regards gender differences, Chinese women are less socially mobile than men, and their mobility outcomes tend to be more affected than men by their social origin.In fitting the density levels model and the core model of social fluidity to the pooled data, I show that the highest likelihood of occurrence lies with the self-inheritance of peasants as well as small business owners. In contrast, mobility between the agricultural sector and non-manual classes displays the lowest likelihood of occurrence. While relative chances of mobility for both men and women are heavily affected the boundary between agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, women are further subject to the hierarchical effect that hinders long-range mobility. In the final part of the empirical analyses, I reveal the decisive role that the first job class plays in mobility processes in China. The results of the multivariate analysis also indicate that the institutional barriers imposed by the hukou system have a striking negative effect on mobility chances.

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This thesis considers how informational imperfections may give rise to advantages for those born to relatively rich parents. The first chapter focuses on the separation of some societies into different classes. Within the model, classes provide greater advantages to those from privileged backgrounds and, even in the absence of legal barriers preventing the lower classes from accessing skilled jobs, the skilled amongst them are still de facto denied access to high paying jobs through statistical discrimination. This chapter shows that there can be a net benefit from class discrimination, versus a classless state, when it creates information relating to the abilities of the upper class. This theme is expanded on in chapter two where a signalling model more explicitly describes the statistical discrimination suffered by some members of society. The advantage conferred on those from privileged backgrounds generates income dispersion, which in turn reinforces the advantages of the rich. If this feedback is strong enough, the model may exhibit multiplicity of steady states. This multiplicity of steady states is backward looking: the income dispersion today depends on the extent to which firms use the information available to them, which in turn depends on the income dispersion in the previous generation. The model of chapter two also demonstrates why societies with more "meritocratic" institutions may exhibit less intergenerational income mobility: the income dispersion that meritocracy creates increases the value of a privileged upbringing. The final chapter adds parental investment to the model. In doing so it brings the model more squarely in line with the statistical discrimination literature, although the model does not exhibit a multiplicity of equilibria. There is a unique optimal investment rule for parents. Exogenous shocks to meritocracy are again examined. Meritocracy increases income variance and hence, from behind the veil of ignorance, creates greater uncertainty over the income an individual will receive. The model describes how a risk averse person might prefer to be born into an economy where they expect to be poorer but avoid this increased uncertainty, and so despite raising incomes, meritocracy may make agents, on average, more unhappy.