Bruce K. Eckland

Benefits of Being Attractive: Differential Payoffs for Men and Women

This study used attractiveness ratings of about 601 males and 745 females based on high school annual pictures to predict marital and socio-economic status 15 yr. later. Attractiveness gets females highly educated husbands with high income, but no benefits in occupational status or own income. It also reduces the probability of remaining unmarried. For males, attractiveness interferes with achievement of status.

Contextual Effects in the High School Attainment Process

This paper presents a multidimensional mediation model of composition influences. Ability and social status of student body composition are distinguished, and the interpersonal and social comparison processes by which their effects tend to offset each other are specified. Whereas the contextual effects of ability were found to be negative, those of social status were positive. Since the two contextual variables themselves are positively and strongly correlated, their effects are almost exactly offsetting in the long run. The model is examined on data for a national sample first surveyed in 1955 as high school sophomores and followed up in 1973.

Access to Higher Education: The Importance of Race, Sex, Social Class, and Academic Credentials

The 30 years following World War II represent a period of unprecedented growth in higher education in the United States. Total enrollments climbed from 1,364,000 just before the War (1939) to 8,560,000 in 1974 (ACE 1964; NCES 1976). Much of this increase was initially due to returning veterans furthering their education and, later, to high postwar birth rates. Additionally, throughout this period there was a marked rise in the proportion of persons reaching 18 who went to college. For example, between 1940 and 1960 the proportion of all 18to 21-year-olds enrolled in college more than doubled (Trow 1961). Both trends appear to have reached a plateau. The birth rate climbed until 1957, leveled off for a number of years, and has been declining since. The leveling effect is only now being felt in higher education. More important, the long-term rise in the percentage of each new age cohort entering college also appears to be ending. The proportion of high school graduates entering college has not increased much in the past decade, rising only slightly between 1960 and 1972 from 41 to 43 percent. In fact, the proportion actually declined at four-year institutions. Thus, it appears that universal higher education will not be achieved in the foreseeable future.1

Education and Political Party: The Effects of College or Social Class?.

The relationship between education and political party preference is examined for nonsuthern males and females using retrospective data from a national sample of high school students followed up in 1970 at about age 30. As expected, the zero-order correlation between years to schooling and Republican party preference was found to be positive. However, controling for inherited partisan loyalties, class origins, and socioeconomic attainment, the positive correlation disappeared and, at least for males, the direct effect of higher education on being Republican was found to be negative, as those who view college as a socializing agent would have predicted. The implications of these findings for the apparent decline and future of class-based politics, as the proportion of college-educated voters continues to increase over the next several decades, are briefly discussed.

Assortative Mating: Theories of mate selection

Theories of mate selection and the effects of assortative mating are reviewed, including differences in the basic theoretical orientations of the social and biological sciences with respect to human evolution and assortative mating. Topics discussed include evolution in parallel and interaction, terminology of nonrandom mate selection, theories of mate choice, social stratification and class endogamy, and suggestions for future research.

High School Contextual Effects for Black and White Students: A Research Note

The differential effects of high school socioeconomic status (SES) and ability contexts upon the school and college going experience of white and black males are examined, using the NLS data. Based on past research, it is predicted that the influence of school SES composition will be primarily salutory, while the influence of school ability context will be negative. Further, it is predicted that these offsetting influences interact with race; i.e., blacks enjoy a greater advantage than whites when attending high status schools and are less adversely affected by the depressant effects of academically competitive environments. Although many of the observed results were negligible, general support was found for both sets of hypotheses.

GENETIC VARIANCE IN THE SES-IQ CORRELATION

Sociologists need to be aware of some of the complex issues associated with the genetics of intelligence as they relate to sociological research. To highlight some of these issues, this article discusses a number of questions dealing with the genetic aspects of the SES4Q correlation. These include: Is the SES-IQ correlation a causal one (due to environmental effects) or spurious (genetic)? If we view it as either due to environmental or genetic factors, what kinds of evidence are needed and available? How does assortative mating affect the genetic variance of IQ? What effect might differentialfertility have on the SES4Q correlation? Is the relationship between the individuals IQ and adult SES a causal one, or is the correlation due to the common dependency of both variables on ones class of origin? Would learning more about the genetic variance in the SES4Q correlation tell us anything of importance about