Shu-Ling Tsai

A Model of Stratification with Response Error in Social and Psychological Variables

The well-known Wisconsin model of achievement posits that the influence of socioeconomic origins on educational, occupational and economic attainment is largelv mediated bY acsademic performance, social influences and aspirations in secondary schooling. The model has been widely replicated, elaborated and criticized. The present analysis asks how powerful this model might be in accounting for social influences, aspirations and attainments when measurement error has been taken into account. There are two indicators of most theoretical construc ts in the model, and manv of these were ascertained from independent sources or as many as 20 Years apart. The model identifies selected response error c orrelations between variables ascertained on the same occasion, from the same person or using the same method. The model also permits retrospective reports of social influences and aspirations to be c ontaminated by intervening events. In our revised estimates, we find empirical support for earlier spec ificsations of the Wisconsin model. We alsofind that the revised model is more powerful in explaining the process of educational and occupational attainment.

Heterogeneity in Returns to College Education: Selection Bias in Contemporary Taiwan

The causal impact of higher education on earnings may be heterogeneous across different members of a population. Using a newly developed instrumental-variable method in economics, we illustrate heterogeneous treatment effects of higher education on earnings resulting from sorting mechanisms that select individuals with certain unobserved attributes into college education. The setting of our empirical work is contemporary Taiwan -- a transitional economy that has recently experienced a rapid expansion in higher education. We find distinct patterns by gender, with selection bias most clearly shown among women but not among men: the college return to earnings is on average greater for women who actually attended college than women who did not attend college.

Language Skills and Status Attainment in Taiwan

This article addresses the importance of language underlying the stratification process in Taiwan within the context of globalization. Specifically, I ask if ones language skills may serve as a key to getting ahead. The Taiwanese government has imposed Mandarin as the official language since 1945 and introduced English courses into compulsory education since 1968. Using panel data, I examine to what extent ones levels of proficiency in various languages help explain the variation in socioeconomic status that is not explained by educational attainment. The results indicate that although education is a major mechanism of socioeconomic achievements, both English- and Mandarin-proficiency make their respective significant contributions as well. More important, I find that people in Taiwan may advance their socioeconomic status more with fluency in English than with fluency in Mandarin. This case study documents how a global language like English may play a role in an East Asian society like Taiwan.

Families, Schools, and Student Achievement Inequality: A Multilevel MIMIC Model Approach.

This article examines inequality in different dimensions of student academic achievement (math, science, and reading) by family background and school context in three East Asian (Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea) and three Western (United States, Germany, and the Czech Republic) nations. Building on Hauser (2009), we develop a novel multiple-indicator multiple-cause (MIMIC) model with a two-level hierarchical linear modeling specification, which allows us to explicitly test whether the several academic achievement constructs respond similarly to variation in family background and variation among schools and countries. The two-level MIMIC model is specified in detail and applied to 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment data. The analysis reveals new empirical insights, such as substantive differences within countries in performance inequality by subject, particularly among East Asian countries. While the data do not support the view of a “virtuous” relationship between excellence and equity in education, nor do they lend strong support to a “vicious” relationship either.

Educational Expansion and Inequality in Taiwan and the Czech Republic

This article presents a comparative analysis of educational inequality by family background and gender in Taiwan and the Czech Republic, which have both experienced substantial educational expansion in the last half-century under different educational systems. We highlight the specific institutional histories of both countries and examine the role of dead-end tracks in mediating educational inequality by family background. Pooling the most recent data available, we use probit analyses of inequality in secondary and tertiary educational attainment across 5-year birth cohorts from 1956 to 1985. In terms of secondary educational attainment, we find that the gap in inequalities by family background between the countries is large, with a decline in inequality in Taiwan but persistent inequality in the Czech case. We attribute these findings to differences in educational expansion and characteristics of the secondary school system. However, in tertiary educational attainment, we find similarities in educational inequality between the two countries.