Jonathan Kelley

Decomposing Differences between Groups

Somewhat divergent approaches to finding the components of group differences (for example, the difference in average earnings across gender or racial groups) have grown up in the literatures of economics and sociology. Both, however, are variants of the same underlying approach. This article illustrates different approaches and draws attention to the conditions under which two, three, or four components of the income gap between groups can be usefully distinguished. The two central issues are which standard one uses to evaluate endowment differences between groups, and whether the scales used to operationalize underlying concepts have arbitrary zero-points or not. This latter difficulty has often been neglected in empirical applications using variables such as education, region, occupation, industry, and marital status. In such cases, the choice of a comparison group is inherently arbitrary, and nothing other than an arbitrary decomposition of the residual group difference can result.

Dimensions of mental health: Life satisfaction, positive affect, anxiety and depression

Psychological well-being and psychological distress are often regarded as distinct, if not orthogonal dimensions of mental health. Based on analyses in this paper, we consider the distinction misleading. Four dimensions seem worth measuring in general population surveys: life satisfaction, positive affect, anxiety and depression. Furthermore, one of the well-being dimensions, life satisfaction, is quite strongly correlated with a distress dimension, depression. A person is unlikely to be both satisfied with life and depressed, but may be satisfied and anxious. The paper is based on convergent validity (exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses) and divergent validity assessments of a range of widely used measures, which were included in the Victorian Quality of Life Panel Survey, 1987.

Class as Conceived by Marx and Dahrendorf: Effects on Income Inequality and Politics in the United States and Great Britain

The class theories of Karl Marx and Ralf Dahrendorf, although subject to much theoretical analysis, largely have been ignored in the dominant lines of quantitative research on status attainment and the political consequences of social stratification. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by drawing out some of the implications of Marxs ownership of the means of production and Dahrendorf s authority for both income inequality and politics, by evaluating these implications empirically and by showing how these conceptions of class can be incorporated into the dominant Blau-Duncan model of status attainment. Using survey data from large national samples in the United States and Great Britain, we show that both Marxs and Dahrendorfs class models have important implications for mens income, increasing by almost half the variance explained by the conventional Blau-Duncan model. The income of American women, in contrast, is little influenced by class and this explains a substantial part of the male-female income gap. As Marx, Dahrendorf, and others predicted, class position has a stronger impact on class identification and politics in Great Britain than in the United States. An analysis of the transfer of class position from one generation to the next in Britain suggests the existence of two overlapping but distinct stratification systems, one a class system rooted in ownership of the means of production and authority, and the other a status system based on education and occupational status.

The Legitimation of Inequality: Occupational Earnings in Nine Nations'

Comprehensive data on public beliefs about the legitimacy of income inequality gathered from large, representative national sample surveys in nine nations conducted by the International Social Survey Programme show: (1) broad agreement on the legitimate pay of low-status, ordinary jobs, (2) agreement that high-status, elite occupations should be paid more than the minimum, but (3) disagreement over how much more they should get. This disagreement is linked to politics and social structure, with older, high SES, politically conservative respondents preferring markedly higher pay for elite occupations, but usually not preferring lower pay for ordinary jobs.

Ballot Paper Cues and the Vote in Australia and Britain: Alphabetic Voting, Sex, and Title

WHEN a voter comes to cast a ballot, it marks the culmination of a host of influences, ranging from the lifelong consequences of adolescent political socialization and the pervasive influence of social class, to more transitory factors such as the evaluation of a particular party leader or the impact of an election slogan. This study seeks to quantify the importance of three influences which are unique in that they are evident on the ballot paper itself and hence might be expected to influence some voters, especially those casual and uncommitted voters who have little other knowledge about, or interest in, the candidates. The ballot paper cues are the position of the candidates name on the ballot paper, the candidates sex, and whether or not the candidate uses an honorary or academic title. These ballot paper influences have received varying but extensive treatments in the academic literature, beginning with Bain and

Immigrants' Work: Equality and Discrimination in the Australian Labour Market

One Australian in five is an immigrant, and almost as many again are the children of immigrants. Most have done well in Australia, but some, particularly Mediterranean immigrants, have not. This paper examines whether this disadvantage reflects differences in education, labour force experience, and English proficiency or whether it is due to discrimination against immigrants. To answer this question we use the best data ever available: the public-use sam ple of the 1981 Census. We estimate a regression model separately for natives, for each of five immigrant groups, and for each of six groups of the second generation. Our model adjusts for education, labour force experience, and language skills. It allows for possible differences between education obtained in Australia and abroad, for differences in labour force experience in Australia and abroad, and for various curvilinear effects. Once differences in endowments are taken into account, we find no evidence of discrimination against immigrants. Further, both immigrants who came to Australia as children and the second generation do as well as longer established Australians, and perhaps better.

ECONOMIC CHANGE AND THE LEGITIMATION OF INEQUALITY: THE TRANSITION FROM SOCIALISM TO THE FREE MARKET IN CENTRAL-EAST EUROPE

ABSTRACT This article takes advantage of a unique historical opportunity, the transformation of Central-East Europe with the collapse of Communism, to address a fundamental question in the social justice-equity-legitimation research tradition: how strong is the link between a nation’s economy and its citizens’ normative judgments concerning income inequality? We argue: (1) that the transition from a socialist economy to a free market economy should increase normative support for income inequality; (2) that to the extent that people perceive differences in pay actually to be large, they will believe more inequality to be morally legitimate; and (3) that normative support for income inequality will be higher among better educated people and among those in higher status jobs. We find that normative support for inequality increased dramatically. In Communist times the Polish and Hungarian publics favored less inequality than citizens of Western nations thought right; but within a decade after the fall of Communism they favored much more inequality than Westerners think right. These normative changes did not arise from socioeconomic or demographic change in population structure but in large part from perceived changes in actual income inequality. Our data are from the World Inequality Study, which pools data from the International Social Survey Programme and other projects; there are 18 representative national samples in six Central-East Europe nations ( N = 23,260) and, for comparison, 32 in Western nations ( N = 39,956).

Sexual Permissiveness: Evidence for a Theory.

This paper presents evidence in support of a theory of human sexuality. The theory basically argues that sex is highly pleasurable and therefore reinforcing; because it reinforces further contacts with the partner sexual involvement makes the formation of stable bonds love and eventually marriage likely. The prospect of marriage gives a clear incentive for people to control their sexual behavior and for society to regulate it. This theory leads to a variety of theories 6 of which can be tested with survey results from large student (N=668) and national (N=1613) samples. The data generally support the theory. This paper also provides evidence on some neglected variables. Enjoying sex physical attractiveness political ideology views of womens careers and preferred family size all affect sexual permissiveness and many of their effects are substantial both absolutely and in comparison with variables used in previous studies. Using ordinary least squares regression methods quantitative estimates are provided of the independent influence of these and other variables on sexual attitudes and behavior.(AUTHOR ABSTRACT)

Educational attainment of the children of divorce: Australia, 1940-90.

Much research suggests that the disruption of marriage through parental death or divorce imposes a small but significant educational disadvantage on American children, although the most recent and comprehensive analysis casts serious doubt on this claim. What is the situation in Australia? Using representative national samples (n= 29,443) and OLS and logistic regression with robust standard errors, we estimate models controlling many potentially confounding variables. We find that divorce in Australia costs seven-tenths of a year of education, mainly by reducing secondary school completion. Importantly, divorce has become more damaging in recent cohorts.

Public opinion and the death penalty in Australia

We examine correlates of public support for capital punishment using data from a large representative national sample of Australians. Personal fear of crime does not explain support for capital punishment, but rating crime fighting as a high national priority does. A finding that women are less supportive of the death penalty than men but more supportive of stiffer sentences raises significant theoretical issues for feminist criminology. Certain aspects of conservatism are unrelated to support for capital punishment, but others are important. Aspects that matter concern resentment toward outgroups, especially Aborigines and non-English-speaking migrants; this finding suggests that criminals can be viewed as yet another outgroup. We advance an elite leadership hypothesis; according to this argument, when political elites abolished capital punishment in the past, it was not in response to pressure from public opinion, but in spite of it. The act of abolition then shifted public opinion away from support for...