Thomas A. DiPrete

The Growing Female Advantage in College Completion: The Role of Family Background and Academic Achievement

In a few short decades, the gender gap in college completion has reversed from favoring men to favoring women. This study, which is the first to assess broadly the causes of the growing female advantage in college completion, considers the impact of family resources as well as gender differences in academic performance and in the pathways to college completion on the rising gender gap. Analyses of General Social Survey data indicate that the female-favorable trend in college completion emerged unevenly by family status of origin to the disadvantage of sons in families with a low-educated or absent father. Additional analyses of National Educational Longitudinal Survey (NELS) data indicate that womens superior academic performance plays a large role in producing the gender gap in college completion, but that this effect remains latent until after the transition to college. For NELS cohorts, who were born in the mid-1970s, the female advantage in college completion remains largest in families with a low-educated or absent father, but currently extends to all family types. In conjunction with womens growing incentives to attain higher education, gender differences in resources related to family background and academic performance largely explain the growing female advantage in college completion.

Assessing Bias in the Estimation of Causal Effects: Rosenbaum Bounds on Matching Estimators and Instrumental Variables Estimation with Imperfect Instruments

Propensity score matching provides an estimate of the effect of a “treatment” variable on an outcome variable that is largely free of bias arising from an association between treatment status and observable variables. However, matching methods are not robust against “hidden bias” arising from unobserved variables that simultaneously affect assignment to treatment and the outcome variable. One strategy for addressing this problem is the Rosenbaum bounds approach, which allows the analyst to determine how strongly an unmeasured confounding variable must affect selection into treatment in order to undermine the conclusions about causal effects from a matching analysis. Instrumental variables (IV) estimation provides an alternative strategy for the estimation of causal effects, but the method typically reduces the precision of the estimate and has an additional source of uncertainty that derives from the untestable nature of the assumptions of the IV approach. A method of assessing this additional uncertainty is proposed so that the total uncertainty of the IV approach can be comparedwith the Rosenbaum bounds approach to uncertainty using matching methods. Because the approaches rely on different information and different assumptions, they provide complementary information about causal relationships. The approach is illustrated via an analysis of the impact of unemployment insurance on the timing of reemployment, the postunemployment wage, and the probability of relocation, using data from several panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP).

Multilevel Models: Methods and Substance

This paper reviews recent developments in the application of multilevel models to substantive problems in sociology. There is no single multilevel model in sociology, but rather a set of more or less closely related approaches for exploring the link between the macro and micro levels of social phenomena. Methodological developments of the last ten years are discussed and contrasted with older methods. Illustrative examples of how multilevel analysis has contributed to sociological knowledge are provided for several areas of the discipline, including demography, education, stratification, and criminology. Cautions in the use of these models for empirical research are discussed, along with possible further developments.

Gender-specific trends in the value of education and the emerging gender gap in college completion.

Analysis of March Current Population Survey data from 1964 through 2002 shows that white women overtook white men in their rates of college completion and that this phenomenon occurred during a period in which women’s standard-of-living gains from college completion grew at a faster rate than those for men. We assess whether these trends are related to changes in the value of education for men and women in terms of earnings returns to higher education, the probability of getting and staying married, education-related differences in family standard of living, and insurance against living in poverty. Although returns to a college education in the form of earnings remained higher for women than for men over the entire period, trends in these returns do not provide a plausible explanation for gender-specific trends in college completion. But when broader measures of material well- being are taken into account, women’s returns to higher education appear to have risen faster than those of men.

School Context and the Gender Gap in Educational Achievement.

Today, boys generally underperform relative to girls in schools throughout the industrialized world. Building on theories about gender identity and reports from prior ethnographic classroom observations, we argue that school environment channels conceptions of masculinity in peer culture, fostering or inhibiting boys’ development of anti-school attitudes and behavior. Girls’ peer groups, by contrast, vary less strongly with the social environment in the extent to which school engagement is stigmatized as un-feminine. As a consequence, boys are more sensitive than girls to school resources that create a learning-oriented environment. To evaluate this argument, we use a quasi-experimental research design and estimate the gender difference in the causal effect of peer socioeconomic status (SES) as an important school resource on test scores. Our design is based on the assumption that assignment to 5th-grade classrooms within Berlin’s schools is as good as random, and we evaluate this selection process with an examination of Berlin’s school regulations, a simulation analysis, and qualitative interviews with school principals. Estimates of the effect of SES composition on male and female performance strongly support our central hypothesis, and other analyses support our proposed mechanism as the likely explanation for gender differences in the causal effect.

Family change, employment transitions, and the welfare state: Household income dynamics in the United States and Germany

Since the demise of modernization theory, social scientists have sought explanations for persisting differences in the stratification of industrialized societies, primarily by studying how educational and labor market institutions shape the life chances of individuals. This approach undervalues two key features of any stratification system : family dynamics and the welfare state. Employment changes, changes in household composition, and changes in the employment situation of a spouse or partner can all trigger large shifts in income and material well-being. The impact of these events is mediated by public tax and transfer mechanisms and by private actions taken by household members. This comparative analysis of household income dynamics in the United States and Germany shows that variations in welfare state policy produce distinct societal patterns of income mobility, and furthermore, shows that the relative importance of labor market events, family change, and welfare state policies for income dynamics depends on gender. The strong interrelationship between individual incentives and the structure of opportunity produces an asymmetry in the long-term impact of events. The negative effects of events that reduce income generally decay over time, while the effects of positive events generally persist

Losers and winners : The financial consequences of separation and divorce for men

Contrary to conventional thinking, the majority of partnered men in the United States lose economic status when their unions dissolve. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this analysis shows that for most men the primary source of economic decline after union dissolution is their inability to fully compensate for the loss of their partners income. A secondary source of economic decline is an increase in compulsory and voluntary support payments. Welfare state tax and transfer mechanisms have a much smaller overall impact on changes in men s living standards following separation. Although most men experience a decline in living standards following union dissolution, mens outcomes are heterogeneous, and the minority of men who relied on their partners for less than one-fifth of pre-dissolution income typically gain from separation and divorce. The data show a clear trend toward greater economic interdependence in American partnerships, and this trend appears to increase the proportion of men who suffer a reduced standard of living following separation.

Segregation in social networks based on acquaintanceship and trust.

Using 2006 General Social Survey data, the authors compare levels of segregation by race and along other dimensions of potential social cleavage in the contemporary United States. Americans are not as isolated as the most extreme recent estimates suggest. However, hopes that “bridging” social capital is more common in broader acquaintanceship networks than in core networks are not supported. Instead, the entire acquaintanceship network is perceived by Americans to be about as segregated as the much smaller network of close ties. People do not always know the religiosity, political ideology, family behaviors, or socioeconomic status of their acquaintances, but perceived social divisions on these dimensions are high, sometimes rivaling racial segregation in acquaintanceship networks. The major challenge to social integration today comes from the tendency of many Americans to isolate themselves from others who differ on race, political ideology, level of religiosity, and other salient aspects of social identity.

Compensation Benchmarking, Leapfrogs, and the Surge in Executive Pay

Scholars frequently argue whether the sharp rise in chief executive officer (CEO) pay in recent years is “efficient” or is a consequence of “rent extraction” because of the failure of corporate governance in individual firms. This article argues that governance failure must be conceptualized at the market rather than the firm level because excessive pay increases for even relatively few CEOs a year spread to other firms through the cognitively and rhetorically constructed compensation networks of “peer groups,” which are used in the benchmarking process to negotiate the compensation of CEOs. Counterfactual simulation based on Standard and Poor’s ExecuComp data demonstrates that the effects of CEO “leapfrogging” potentially explain a considerable fraction of the overall upward movement of executive compensation since the early 1990s.

Social Mobility and Social Structure.

A compilation of original work by leading scholars who have all adopted structural approaches to mobility studies. It analyzes concrete social entities such as individuals, jobs, organizations and labour markets with reference to the structures of exchange among them.