Sigal Alon

Assessing the “Mismatch” Hypothesis: Differences in College Graduation Rates by Institutional Selectivity

This article evaluates the “mismatch” hypothesis, advocated by opponents of affirmative action, which predicts lower graduation rates for minority students who attend selective postsecondary institutions than for those who attend colleges and universities where their academic credentials are better matched to the institutional average. Using two nationally representative longitudinal surveys and a unique survey of students who were enrolled at selective and highly selective institutions, the authors tested the mismatch hypothesis by implementing a robust methodology that jointly considered enrollment in and graduation from selective institutions as interrelated outcomes. The findings do not support the “mismatch” hypothesis for black and Hispanic (as well as white and Asian) students who attended college during 1980s and early 1990s.

The Evolution of Class Inequality in Higher Education: Competition, Exclusion, and Adaptation

This study develops a comprehensive theoretical framework regarding the evolution of the class divide in postsecondary education. I conceptualize three prototypes of class inequality—effectively maintained, declining, and expanding—and associate their emergence with the level of competition in college admissions. I also unearth the twin mechanisms, exclusion and adaptation, that link class hierarchy to a highly stratified postsecondary system in an allegedly meritocratic environment. Intra- and inter-cohort comparisons reveal that while the class divide regarding enrollment and access to selective postsecondary schooling is ubiquitous, it declines when competition for slots in higher education is low and expands during periods of high competition. In such a regime of effectively expanding inequality (EEI), a greater emphasis on a certain selection criterion (like test scores) in admission decisions—required to sort the influx of applicants—is bolstered by class-based polarization vis-à-vis this particular criterion. This vicious cycle of exclusion and adaptation intensifies and expedites the escalation of class inequality. The results show that adaptation is more effective than exclusion in expanding class inequality in U.S. higher education.

Labor force attachment and the evolving wage gap between white, black, and hispanic young women

In this article, the authors examine the role of labor force attachment (LFA) in shaping the diverging wage trajectories of White, Black, and Hispanic women during their first postschooling decade. The authors take advantage of the longitudinal aspects of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth work history data by constructing detailed annual and cumulative measures of LFA and use them to examine womens wage profiles. The findings show constant racial and ethnic wage gaps among women with college education and a widening race gap among women with no college degree. The latter pattern emphasizes the importance of market-related processes in generating wage inequality among unskilled women. The authors document substantial racial and ethnic gaps within this group in the accumulation of LFA, especially immediately after the transition from school to work. This deficit in labor market experience plays a critical role in creating the diverse wage trajectories of White, Black, and Hispanic women with no college education.

The Effects of Early Work Experience on Young Women's Labor Force Attachment

In this article, we examine womens labor force experience during the early life course in order to assess the conditions conducive to the establishment of stable labor force careers. To represent the complexity of womens work trajectories during young adulthood, we develop a conceptual framework that depicts a broad range of work activity profiles. Empirical results obtained using the NLSY show that three aspects of early experience influence mature womens labor force attachment, namely the amount of experience accumulated; the timing of work experience; and the volatility of that experience. Above and beyond these experience measures, we also find that background factors influence adult womens attachment to the market. The conclusion discusses the policy implications of these results.

Gender Differences in the Formation of a Field of Study Choice Set

Women now surpass men in overall rates of college graduation in many industrialized countries, but sex segregation in fields of study persists. In a world where gender norms have changed but gender stereotypes remain strong, we argue that mens and womens attitudes and orientations toward fields of study in college are less constrained by gendered institutions than is the ranking of these fields. Accordingly, the sex segregation in the broader choice set of majors considered by college applicants may be lower than the sex segregation in their first preference field of study selection. With unique data on the broader set of fields considered by applicants to elite Israeli universities, we find support for this theory. The factors that drive the gender gap in the choice of field of study, in particular labor market earnings, risk aversion, and the sex composition of fields, are weaker in the broad set of choices than in the first choice. The result is less segregation in considered majors than in the first choice and, more broadly, different gender patterns in the decision process for the set of considered majors and for the first choice. We consider the theoretical implications of these results.

Intersectional Inequality: Race, Class, Test Scores, and PovertyIntersectional Inequality: Race, Class, Test Scores, and Poverty, by RaginCharles C.FissPeer C.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. 173 pp.

Intersectional Inequality: Race, Class, Test Scores, and Poverty deals with the core nature of social inequality, specifically, the overlap between the distribution of assets, goods, and resources in a society, which means that some individuals consistently appear at the top of all status hierarchies, while others suffer from multiple disadvantages. Over the years, this phenomenon was described in the literature as intersectionality (Hill Collins 1990; Cotter et al. 1999), cumulative dis/ advantages (Merton 1968; DiPrete and Eirich 2006), crystallization (Grusky 2001), and overlapping dis/advantages (Alon 2007). Many have pointed out that focusing on such nonrandom patterns can facilitate our understanding of the structuring of the stratification system and the underlying processes that produce and maintain it from one generation to the next. Yet, while the empirical wisdom is that ‘‘much can be learned about the basic causal force by simply examining the nature of the nonrandom combinations of variables for which we normally control’’ (Lieberson 1985:211), the conventional quantitative method—that is, the regression model—is designed to estimate the net effect of variables while ‘‘holding everything else equal.’’ Thus, the methods we typically use fail to capture the core nature of social inequality. In this short book, Charles Ragin and Peer Fiss harness the tools previously developed in The Comparative Method (Ragin 1987), Fuzzy-Set Social Science (Ragin 2000), and Redesigning Social Inquiry: Fuzzy Sets and Beyond (Ragin 2008) to weigh in on the well-known debate—featured in Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve (1994) and Claude Fischer and colleagues’ Inequality by Design (1996)— regarding the extent to which test scores shape the individual’s life chances, specifically in experiencing or avoiding poverty. Methodologically, according to Ragin and Fiss, The Bell Curve and Inequality by Design represent two extreme approaches for social science research. On the one side, The Bell Curve’s specification depicts a ‘‘simple picture’’ by focusing on only three variables to predict poverty (test scores, socioeconomic status, and age); while on the other side, Inequality by Design’s model is ‘‘everything but the kitchen sink,’’ as it includes 29 independent variables. Both studies are summarized in Chapter Two, and their analyses are replicated in Chapter Three using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth dataset. Assessing the explanatory power of these models (how many cases are correctly classified), Ragin and Fiss’s analysis demonstrates that The Bell Curve’s performs poorly compared to Inequality by Design’s specification. Yet this achievement has come at the cost of parsimony. Ragin and Fiss suggest a middle-path approach by focusing on six theoretically important explanatory variables (race, gender, parental income, parental education, respondent’s education, test scores, and household composition) that are used to calibrate fuzzy sets in Chapter Four. These variables are manipulated so that they better capture the complexity of the social world. The dichotomous poverty variable (above/ below the official poverty threshold) is converted into two dummy variables, inpoverty and not-in-poverty, to allow a more nuanced membership in poverty that does not clump together those just above the poverty line with the more affluent. The explanatory variables receive the same treatment. In subsequent chapters (5 to 7) Ragin and Fiss demonstrate the analytic leverage of their intersectional approach as they weigh in on the complex, combinatorial, and multidimensional link between race, class, test scores, and poverty. Using fuzzy-set analytic methods, they assess the degree of set coincidence, that is, the degree to which multiple advantages (not-low-test-score, not-low-income-parents, educated, educated-parents) and multiple disadvantages (not-high-test-score, not-high-incomeparents, not-highly-educated, not-highlyeducated-parents) coincide. The findings 490 Reviews

25.00 paper. ISBN: 9780226414409.

This study demonstrates the analytical leverage gained from considering the entire college pipeline-including the application, admission and graduation stages-in examining the economic position of various groups upon labor market entry. The findings, based on data from three elite universities in Israel, reveal that the process that shapes economic inequality between different ethnic and immigrant groups is not necessarily cumulative. Field of study stratification does not expand systematically from stage to stage and the position of groups on the field of study hierarchy at each stage is not entirely explained by academic preparation. Differential selection and attrition processes, as well as ambition and aspirations, also shape the position of ethnic groups in the earnings hierarchy and generate a non-cumulative pattern. These findings suggest that a cross-sectional assessment of field of study inequality at the graduation stage can generate misleading conclusions about group-based economic inequality among workers with a bachelors degree.