Changing Pathways to Attainment in Men's Lives: Historical Patterns of School, Work, and Social Class

Pathways to attainment are modified through historical time, reflecting the progressive consolidation of the educational trajectory in the life course, as well as changingpatterns of social class and the economy. Using data from the Occupational Changes in a Generation surveys, this study examines a series of hypotheses that interrelate educational attainment with historical change, expansions and contractions in labor market sectors, and socioeconomic status. Consistent with expectations, opportunities in manufacturing drew students from primary school before World War II, while expansions in the government sector increased the likelihood of drop-out at the secondary and tertiary levels after the war. In this laterperiod, studentsfrom the lower and middle classes often were more likely to leave school because of economic expansion. Thus, through historical time the capacity of the economy to draw studentsfrom school has progressed upward through the educational career and has affected the lower and middle classes disproportionately.

[1]  Robert D. Mare,et al.  Social Background and School Continuation Decisions , 1980 .

[2]  Wanda Minge-Kalman.  The Industrial Revolution and the European Family: The Institutionalization of ‘Childhood’ as a Market for Family Labor , 1978, Comparative Studies in Society and History.

[3]  R. Hauser,et al.  Trends in Family Effects on the Education of Black and White Brothers. , 1995 .

[4]  B. Fuller.  Youth Job Structure and School Enrollment, 1890-1920. , 1983 .

[5]  John D. Pulliam.  History of Education in America , 1976 .

[6]  P. Osterman.  Education and Labor Markets at the Turn of the Century , 1979 .

[7]  L. Cremin,et al.  A history of education in American culture , 1953 .

[8]  Selwyn K. Troen.  Technological Development and Adolescence: The Early Twentieth Century , 1985 .

[9]  M. Katz,et al.  Youth and Early Industrialization in a Canadian City , 1978, American Journal of Sociology.

[10]  David B. Tyack.  The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education , 1974 .

[11]  Louise A. Tilly,et al.  Women, Work and Family , 1979 .

[12]  B. Duncan.  Dropouts and the Unemployed , 1965, Journal of Political Economy.

[13]  O. D. Duncan,et al.  The American Occupational Structure , 1967 .

[14]  R. Rubinson.  Class Formation, Politics, and Institutions: Schooling in the United States , 1986, American Journal of Sociology.

[15]  D. Featherman,et al.  Equality of Schooling: Trends and Prospects. , 1976 .

[16]  A. L. Ferriss,et al.  Indicators of Trends in American Education. , 1972 .

[17]  M. Shanahan,et al.  History and Agency in Men's Lives: Pathways to Achievement in Cohort Perspective , 1997 .

[18]  O. D. Duncan,et al.  Socioeconomic Background and Achievement. , 1974 .

[19]  Eugene F. Provenzo,et al.  History of Education and Culture in America , 1983 .

[20]  R. Hauser,et al.  Education, occupation, and earnings : achievement in the early career , 1976 .

[21]  David B. Tyack,et al.  Law and the Shaping of Public Education, 1785-1954 , 1987 .

[22]  Martin Trow,et al.  Problems in the Transition from Elite to Mass Higher Education. , 1973 .

[23]  A. Raftery,et al.  Maximally Maintained Inequality: Expansion, Reform, and Opportunity in Irish Education, 1921-75. , 1993 .

[24]  John W. Meyer,et al.  Public Education as Nation-Building in America: Enrollments and Bureaucratization in the American States, 1870-1930 , 1979, American Journal of Sociology.

[25]  Kazuo Yamaguchi,et al.  Event History Analysis. , 1992 .

[26]  M. Felson,et al.  Social demographic and economic interrelationships with educational trends in the United States 1947-1974. , 1978 .

[27]  M. Hannan,et al.  Social Dynamics: Models and Methods. , 1986 .

[28]  Gary D. Sandefur,et al.  Opportunity and Change. , 1978 .

[29]  P. O'Connell,et al.  The Family Economy, Work, and Educational Participation in the United States, 1890-1940 , 1988, American Journal of Sociology.

[30]  Viviana A. Zelizer,et al.  Pricing the priceless child : the changing social value of children , 1986 .

[31]  Lori Kent,et al.  POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION OF WHITE WOMEN IN 1900 , 1989 .

[32]  D. Featherman,et al.  Design for a Replicate Study of Social Mobility in the United States. , 1972 .

[33]  P. Walters.  Occupational and Labor Market Effects on Secondary and Postsecondary Educational Expansion in the United States: 1922 to 1979 , 1984 .