Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Measures of socio-economic status are usually based upon people's occupational status. So, in a survey of fifteen year olds conducted in their schools, how can you collect such information about their parents? The most convenient method is to ask the young people themselves to describe their parents' occupations. This method is cost-effective and does not require making contact with parents, a stage which would be likely to increase non-response of students to the survey, as well as item non-response to the required questions. But can one trust the socio-economic data obtained this way?

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) was conducted in 2000. Students aged 15 to 16 were assessed in their literacy skills and a chief aim of this study was to see how socio-economic status was associated with literacy. Student’s reporting of their parents’ occupation and highest level of education was used as an indicator of parental social economic status. During the pilot study in England, conducted in 1999, the reliability of this proxy data was investigated. Students reported details of their parents occupations and education at school by self-completion questionnaire. Interviews were then carried out by telephone with 307 mothers and 244 fathers of these students. Measures of socio-economic status and educational attainment derived from both sources were compared.

This paper describes the reliability of student reporting and identifies areas of weakness. It also identifies implications for the analysis of data as the quality of reporting was related to students' literacy skills.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Educational researchers have long-ignored the cross-national evidence for the U.S-based findings of the effects of family structure on academic performance. Revisiting the HL hypothesis (Heyneman and Loxley 1983) and Esping-Andersen’s recent re-theorization of family-relevant welfare state regime typology, I found that first GDP per capita has positive effects on academic performance indirectly through sibling size. Second, the maximum degree of familialism in the corporatist regime nation-states has exacerbated the adverse effects of sibling size. However, we need to exercise caution while making statements about how the national economic indicators as well as welfare state regimes affect such an association. Data are from the OECD PISA data base and analyses were based on a multi-level analysis of 31 countries.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In many economically advanced societies, higher education is beeing transformed from elite to a mass system. Massification has been accompanied by institutional differentiation. Systems, which had consisted almost exclusively of research universities have added a second-tier of less selective colleges. These second tier institutions have absorbed most of the growth in enrollments. At one and the same time, higher education is opening up to the working classes, and is being stratified within. This paper reports results of a 15 country comparative study of the association between the transformation of higher education on the one hand, and changes in educational stratification on the other hand. We capitalize on differences between countries in the extent of higher educational expansion and its forms of differentiation, and study how they are related to changes in the rates of attendance in the first and second tier institutions as well as class, gender and ethnic/racial inequalities therein.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This article criticizes that A. G. Frank' Reorient neglects the important role of Choson Dynasty(1392-1910, in Korea) in East Asia. Frank tried to see world between 1400 and 1800 in unity in diversity and concluded that various parts of Asia, especially East Asia were far more important in and to world economy than all of Europe. He treated mainly economic, demographic, and technical development of Japan and China in East Asia. But without Choson Dynasty, anyone cannot understand and analyse properly international economic and foreign relation of East Asia. The reasons are as follows. First, Choson between 1400-1800 had developed economically as much as China and Japan. Second, Choson had played a great role in connecting China and Japan and had influenced much positive effects on development of Japan. Third, Choson could overcome so-called 'seventeenth century crisis' and succeeded in continuing its political system, although the Myng in China had fallen. This shows that diverse local or national 'internal' circumstance can cause different way of development in East Asia. So we need to reappraise Reorient's basic proposition, a 'horizontally integrative macro-history' of world. Only when role of Choson can be properly estimated, dynamics and diversity of East Asia can be understood. Futhermore this right estimation of Choson between 1400-1800 can be useful in preventing danger of a newly emerging Chino-centric trends.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: Although interest in marital patterns in the U.S. has been high in recent times, there has been very little published about remarriage. Data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation’s (SIPP) marital history (collected in the second interview of the longitudinal study) can provide a broad look at remarriage following divorce during the last part of the 20th century. This poster presentation uses pooled data from three SIPP panels, 1996, 2001 and 2004 in order to look at the following questions: What proportion of recent marriages are remarriages? What percent remarry within 5 years after divorce? Who is more likely to remarry? How long do people wait until they remarry? What is the composition of the remarried households that are formed?
SIPP data show that a lower proportion of marriages in the last year for 2001 and 2004 involved at least one spouse who was remarrying than for 1990 and 1996. A slightly higher percentage of men than women remarry within 5 years after a divorce, and a higher percentage of whites than blacks remarry following a divorce. The median duration to remarriage after divorce from a first marriage has varied little over time, and is roughly 3-4 years. The majority of spouses in recently remarried couples are age 25-44, and most of the households they form do not include children under 18. However, most recently remarried spouses do have biological children (of any age).