Jani Erola

Social Mobility and Education of Finnish Cohorts Born 1936—75 Succeeding While Failing in Equality of Opportunity?

This is a study of the intergenerational occupational class mobility of cohorts born 1936—75 in Finland and of the role of the changes in educational attainment. The data are taken from the Finnish Census Panel, from which mobility tables for 5-year cohorts that have reached the age of 25 have been constructed at 7 time-points: 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995 and 2000. The period change in social fluidity appears to be towards greater openness for both men and women. However, the cohort differences are more significant. Class origins and destinations are more strongly associated with the youngest cohorts than with the cohorts born in 1951—65, suggesting a strengthening of social inheritance. The period change can be explained by the changes in educational attainment. However, although the changes in the origin—education association play some role in reducing cohort differences, controlling education-related variation does not change them very much. The findings suggest that, in order to explain the cohort differences, it might be worthwhile considering institutional factors other than education.

Social workers’ perceptions of the causes of poverty in the Nordic countries:

Street-level bureaucrats have been given an increasing role in the implementation of policies aimed at the poor. The article analyses: (1) how social workers in the Nordic countries explain the causes of poverty and whether there are variations between countries in social workers’ perceptions; and (2) the nature of the impact, if any, of various individual- and municipal-level factors on social workers’ perceptions of the causes of poverty. Survey data gathered from social workers in four countries are analysed and combined with data from the municipalities in which the respondents work. The results illustrate that social workers display a surprisingly large variation in perceptions: there are differences between countries and also differences related to individual-level factors, while municipality-level factors do not appear to influence the perceptions of social workers in an obvious way.

Sibling Similarity in Family Formation

Sibling studies have been widely used to analyze the impact of family background on socioeconomic and, to a lesser extent, demographic outcomes. We contribute to this literature with a novel research design that combines sibling comparisons and sequence analysis to analyze longitudinal family-formation trajectories of siblings and unrelated persons. This allows us to scrutinize in a more rigorous way whether sibling similarity exists in family-formation trajectories and whether siblings’ shared background characteristics, such as parental education and early childhood family structure, can account for similarity in family formation. We use Finnish register data from 1987 through 2007 to construct longitudinal family-formation trajectories in young adulthood for siblings and unrelated dyads (N = 14,257 dyads). Findings show that family formation is moderately but significantly more similar for siblings than for unrelated dyads, also after controlling for crucial parental background characteristics. Shared parental background characteristics add surprisingly little to account for sibling similarity in family formation. Instead, gender and the respondents’ own education are more decisive forces in the stratification of family formation. Yet, family internal dynamics seem to reinforce this stratification such that siblings have a higher probability to experience similar family-formation patterns. In particular, patterns that correspond with economic disadvantage are concentrated within families. This is in line with a growing body of research highlighting the importance of family structure in the reproduction of social inequality.

Why Probability Has Not Succeeded in Sociology

Arguably, sociologists often apply deterministic explanations, unlike in many other sciences where probabilistic explanations have turned out to be more efficient. The advantages of applying probabilistic explanations more frequently could be: improved possibilities for cross-disciplinary work; the simplification of successful explanations; an easier way to implement uncertainty to models; new ways to utilize the classical theories of sociology; and increased freedom to choose research methods. According to the previously published literature, one of the reasons for not applying probabilistic explanations has been the strong positivist heritage in sociology. The following additional factors are considered: important classics of sociology were written before probability theories matured; and qualitative methods have provided the possibility to respond to the need for empirical research. In this way, sociologists have avoided the extensive work of re-evaluating the existing theories from a probabilistic point of view.

Parental Resources, Sibship Size, and Educational Performance in 20 Countries Evidence for the Compensation Model

We study whether having several siblings decreases the level of educational performance of adolescents and whether this phenomenon can be compensated by other factors such as the economic or cultural resources of the parents. Based on this compensation model, parental resources should be associated with children’s educational attainments more strongly in families with a higher rather than a lower number of children. We analyzed the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) data from 20 Western countries and found that better family wealth, an increased level of parental education, and a higher parental occupational status were associated with increased educational attainments more strongly among 15-year-old children who have siblings than among children without siblings. The same effect was not found in the case of family cultural possessions. Although parental resources may matter more in larger families than in smaller families, some types of resources are more important than others regarding compensation.

No Crisis but Methodological Separatism: A Comparative Study of Finnish and Danish Publication Trends between 1990 and 2009

This article compares methodological trends in nationally and internationally oriented sociology using data from the articles of three Nordic sociological journals: one international (Acta Sociologica), one Finnish (Sosiologia), and one Danish (Dansk Sociologi). The data consists of 943 articles in total: 353 published in Acta Sociologica, 277 in Sosiologia and 313 in Dansk Sociologi over the period 1990–2009. We distinguish between three main types of article: those having no or very little empirical content; empirical articles applying qualitative analysis; and empirical articles applying quantitative methods. The results suggest that quantitative research is increasingly concentrated in international publishing venues, while national journals act more and more as platforms for qualitative research. In conclusion, the broader implications of these diverging publishing trends for sociological research are discussed.

Swinging support? Economic cycles and changes in the public attitudes towards welfare recipients in Finland 1995–2010

ABSTRACT This article analyses the variation in public attitudes towards welfare recipients according to economic cycles. This question is of great importance at the time of recent fiscal crisis across Europe. Previous research has indicated that economic recession leads to declining welfare state support, although some findings show stronger support during times of increased financial strain. Finland provides ample opportunity to investigate the effects of situational factors, as it experienced two severe economic downturns during the period of examination. Unlike many previous studies, we also considered whether the association between economic cycles and attitudes was dependent on socioeconomic status. Analyses reveal that high unemployment and economic downturns diminish public support for welfare provisioning. Furthermore, the results show that both individual and spousal unemployment, as well as social class position, are associated with people’s attitudes towards welfare recipients. These associations remain when the national unemployment rate and GDP growth rate are taken into account. Overall, the working class has stricter opinions of welfare recipients during economic downturns, whereas the opposite is true for the service classes and the self-employed. Moreover, men have stricter attitudes towards welfare recipients during economic recessions.

Institutional change and parental compensation in intergenerational attainment

Previous research has shown how institutional changes, such as educational expansion, have weakened parental influence on educational attainment. We extend this analysis to occupational attainment and put forth a parental compensation hypothesis: as the origin-education (OE) association weakens, parents act to compensate for this in order to maintain their influence on the childs occupational attainment. We should see this as a strengthened origin-destination association net of education (net OD). Further, we study whether these compensatory actions are triggered by changes in educational institutions and whether the institutional changes that reduce educational inequality are the same ones that prompt parental compensation. We have linked data from five waves of the European Social Survey (2002-10) with data on educational institutions matched to birth cohorts born 1941-80 in 25 countries. We find weakened OE and strengthened net OD associations, supporting our parental compensation hypothesis. Multilevel mixed effects regression analyses reveal that reforms lengthening compulsory education, and the increased access to and the attainment of higher education have had a positive influence on parental compensation. As a conclusion, a later school leaving age seems to secure increased parental influence on childrens occupational attainment, while parents seem to have reacted to a lesser extent on the changes in higher education.

Does death really make us equal? Educational attainment and resource compensation after paternal death in Finland

Attempts to explain the persistent importance of family background for childrens educational attainment typically highlight the ways in which parents pass down educational, economic and social resources to their children. However, parental resources may also play a crucial role for preventing family crises from spiraling into cumulative disadvantage. To study such compensation processes, we examine the consequences of a fathers death on childrens educational trajectories, using a Finnish register-based sample of children born between 1982 and 1987. The results based on multilevel linear probability models both support and contradict our compensation hypothesis. Children who lost their father were not more likely to drop out of upper secondary school, as long as their surviving mother had high levels of socioeconomic resources. Similar compensation processes were visible in the case of entering polytechnic higher education. However, with regard to university attendance, bereavement noticeably reduced the traditional advantage of children with high-resource parents.

Compensation and other forms of accumulation in intergenerational social inequality: The Role of Compensation and Multiplication in Resource Accumulation

Practically all modern political movements accept the ideal of equal opportunity in the context of intergenerational social inequality. That principle, also known as meritocracy, argues that adult status should not be determined by the socioeconomic status of the family you are born into. Rather, your own skills and motivation should decide the position in which you end up. This is good not only for equality but also for the efficiency of a society as this guarantees that the most suitable persons work in each task. In a society where skills are spread approximately evenly across children born into the families with different socioeconomic backgrounds, equality of opportunity is strongest when the inheritance of socioeconomic status is weakest (and there is the most intergenerational social mobility). Many countries have moved in this direction; the conclusion of existing research is that socioeconomic inheritance has weakened in most of the developed countries over the period after World War II (Ganzeboom et al. 1991; Treiman and Ganzeboom 2000; Hout and DiPrete 2006; for an exception, the United States, see Beller and Hout 2006). Yet parental background continues to play an important role in socioeconomic attainment in all societies. Parents with more resources are often able to guarantee their children a better-off position everywhere. It is often argued that perfect equality of opportunity is impossible to achieve. Even if this is the case, it should be possible to find out which societies and what policies have the biggest effects on social mobility. There have been successful attempts to rank countries according to the strength of the association between parent and child statuses (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992; Aaberge et al. 2002; Breen 2004). Despite the merits of these studies, conclusions about the mechanisms that strengthen or weaken the association have nonetheless remained uncertain. The evidence suggests that some