Richard T. Campbell

Status Attainment and Status Maintenance: A Study of Stratification in Old Age

While sociologists have been interested in the stratification process at ages when members of a cohort experience many changes, attention has been focused most on the beginnings of the socioeconomic career. Though many changes also occur later in life, relatively little attention has been given to them. In this paper, the effect of aging on the relation of status variables to income is analyzed through a comparison of status attainment models for a cohort before and after most of its members have retired. Data for the earlier period are from the 1962 OCG survey and, for the later period, are from the combined 1973, 1974 and 1975 NORC General Social Survey. The analysis shows little change in the pattern of effects. Within the restricted age range, age has trivial effects. Respondents education, occupation and marital status have direct effects on income. Overall, the analysis suggests a great deal of continuity in the determinants of income. Despite the potentially disruptive effects of changes at this age, the relation of status variables to income remains almost untouched in old age.

Net Worth as an Aspect of Status

While sociologists have recognized the importance of wealth for analysis of political power, they have given little attention to wealth as a measure of economic status. Yet from both a sociological and an economic point of view, wealth is an important determinant of status and life chances, especially at the end of the life cycle. In this paper we discuss the role of net worth as a component of status, and, using data from the National Longitudinal Studies of Labor Force Participation, we estimate a status-attainment model for net worth. Net worth includes savings, home equity, business assets, and real estate holdings. We find that (a) the effects of family background are transmitted via education; (b) the effect of education is asymptotic rather than linear; (c) single and divorced persons possess substantially fewer assets, net of other characteristics, than married persons; and (d) net of all other variables, earnings have a substantial effect on net worth. The effects of family background and socioeconomic attainments on net worth suggest that expanded definitions of status may yield more understanding of the stratification system.

Status Claims and Status Attainment: The Determinants of Financial Well-Being'

This paper examines the dimensionality of status measures related to net worth and occupation. The measures of status considered include: home equity, savings, real estate assets, business assets, earnings, and pension coverage. We consider the role of each in status evaluations and examine empirically whether the process of attainment of each is the same. We reject this hypothesis and present a final model that allows a different process of attainment for each measure. We find that, net of earnings, family formation measures have large effects on the different status measures consistent with different patterns of family needs. Finally, we discuss the implications of using wealth and consumption measures as measures of status.

Synthetic Cohorts from Panel Surveys An Approach to Studying Rare Events

Studies of the determinants and effects of life events such as widowhood and retirement suffer from the fact that the events, despite their common occurrence in the lives of individuals are, from the researchers perspective, relatively rare. As a result, research designs require inevitable compromises. Many of these compromises lead to biases of one kind or another. One possible means of avoiding at least some of the biases is to form synthetic cohorts of individuals who have experienced events by pooling observations from panel surveys. This approach yields a multiwave data set centered on the event of interest with fixed amounts of pre- and postevent data. The data can be analyzed using a variety of techniques and the results can be interpreted in light of the interrupted times series design.

Longitudinal Design and Longitudinal Analysis A Comparison of Three Approaches

The desirability of longitudinal data is generally accepted among researchers in aging and gerontology. In recent years, a great deal of such data have been collected either in the form of large scale national surveys of more local efforts. Not uncommonly, such data are underanalyzed. While part of the reason for this waste of data has to do with the unavailability of suitable methods of data analysis, recent developments provide researchers with several new and exciting ways of looking at longitudinal data. This article surveys three of them: multivariate analysis of variance, the LISREL model, and event history analysis.