Education Across the Life Course

There is a huge demand for high-quality longitudinal educational research in Germany. In particular, there is a clear need for both analytical and methodological progress in order to understand educational pathways through the life course and how they lead to different outcomes. This paper identifies the theoretical and methodological challenges of studying education across the life course and describes the structure of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) in Germany.competence development, educational decisions, formal, informal and non-formal educational environments, returns to education, educational trajectories, life course research, longitudinal analysis, panel data

Wealth inequality in Europe and the delusive egalitarianism of Scandinavian countries

Past sociological inequality research focused on (labor) market outcomes, while neglecting the even more important role of wealth. In our study we investigate the distribution of wealth among the elderly across Europe within the framework of Esping-Andersen’s typology of welfare states. Using SHARE data, our analyses suggest (1) that there is strong variation in the distribution of wealth between European countries, and (2) that patterns of wealth inequality differ strongly from patterns of income inequality. Surprisingly high levels of wealth disparity were found in the social democratic welfare regimes commonly known as very egalitarian societies. We conclude that Esping-Andersen’s scheme requires reconsideration because it is based on a one-sided understanding of social stratification not accounting for the central role of wealth in the stratification process.Inequality, wealth, net worth, income, SHARE, stratification, welfare state, Europe

Dropping Out of Higher Education in Germany: Using Retrospective Life Course Data to Determine Dropout Rates and Destinations of Non-completers

In recent years, the high rates of higher education dropout have raised attention of education research and policy makers in Germany. However, due to data privacy legislation, it remains challenging to obtain information about the individual progress of students through higher education and the destinations of non-completers. With conventional administrative or cross-sectional data, it is not possible to distinguish non-completion from dropout, so that it mostly has to remain unclear if non-completers reach graduation elsewhere. This contribution uses the retrospective life course data of the NEPS starting cohort 6 to empirically disentangle non-completion and dropout of full-time students in higher education. We discuss the methodological challenges of conventional approaches and show how the advantages of retrospective life course data can be exploited for higher education research. We furthermore examine the destinations of non-completers and dropouts as well as the labour market returns of dropouts, using sequence data analyses and logistic regressions. Our results show that conventional designs possibly are prone to overestimate dropout rates. Longitudinal analyses of destinations after dropout reveal that the permeability between vocational training and higher education is not unidirectional. Vocational training is a relevant absorber of higher education dropouts, but at the same time, vocational qualifications that were gained prior to higher education work as safety-net that buffers labour market risks of dropouts

Macrosociology, rational choice theory and time: a theoretical perspective on the empirical analysis of social processes

"In the first part of this paper, Blossfeld discusses some of the historical reasons why the explosion of rational choice scholarship in the social sciences has had surprisingly little influence on macro-sociological data analysis. In the second part, he shows that any theoretically powerful sociological analysis of a macro-sociological problem must pay attention to both structural- and micro-Ievel issues but not in the usual static way. Any macro-micro framework must recognize that time is significant in this relationship. It must identify the particular historical structures and processes that dominate the changes occurring in a given population, and it must specify the causal mechanisms that allow us to trace the encounters of intentionally acting individuals with the flow of history as a series of choice processes."Die Studie diskutiert einige der vorwiegend historischen Gründe, warum das explosionsartige Anwachsen des rational-choice-Ansatzes in den Sozialwissenschaften bisher nur einen relativ geringen Einfluß auf die makrosoziologische Datenanalyse hat. In kritischer Auseinandersetzung mit dem rational-choice-Ansatz weist der Autor darauf hin, daß eine theoretisch fruchtbare Analyse makrosoziologischer Probleme nicht auf dem bisher üblichen statistischen Weg erfolgen kann. Jeder Makro-Mikro-Ansatz hat den Zeitfaktor zu berücksichtigen, der die Beziehung der Ebenen signifikant beeinflußt. Dazu müssen die besonderen historischen Strukturen und Prozesse in einer gegebenen Gesellschaft bzw. Population erfaßt und der spezifische kausale Mechanismus identifiziert werden, der die Intentionen von individuellen Akteuren mit dynamischen historischen Prozessen auf der Makroebene vermittelt. Am Beispiel des Heiratsverhaltens werden einige der theoretischen Annahmen demonstriert. (pre

What Influences the Rate of Entry into Motherhood of Women Enrolled in Full-Time Education? A Difference-in-Differences Analysis of the Effect of the German Unification

The purpose of this paper is to study the entry into motherhood of women in full-time education in East and West Germany before and after German unification. Using longitudinal data from the ‘National Educational Panel Study’ (NEPS), we have conducted a difference-in-differences analysis and apply multivariate methods. Our longitudinal analysis demonstrated that the conflict between the sequencing norm and the age norm is dependent on women’s age, social origin, and pro-natalist state support for women in full-time education. Women who are enrolled in education enter motherhood more often as age increases, since the pressure coming from the normative timing of motherhood is increasing, although with a declining slope. To avoid the jeopardizing consequences of motherhood on educational success, families from higher social origins have a stronger desire that women should first finish education before they have their first baby. The results of our analysis also demonstrate that the fertility behaviour of young East German women who are enrolled in full-time education has changed with German unification

The Interplay Between Instructional Pace, Skill Externalities, and Student Achievement: An Empirical Assessment

This article empirically validates a theoretical model from Kiss (B.E. J Econ Anal Policy 17:1–10, 2017) that addresses the transmission channels through which increases in peer achievement levels may affect other students’ achievement. In his model, a higher share of better students has two effects: first, weaker students benefit from skill externalities generated by their better classmates. At the same time, however, better students further induce teachers to instruct at a more demanding pace. Based on these two effects, I derive three hypotheses and test them on data on German secondary school students. Empirical findings are consistent with the model’s predictions: increases in the share of better classmates (a) are always beneficial for good students, (b) may hurt weak students, and (c) boost weak students’ achievement if the extent of interaction between better and weaker students is high. Taken together, these findings suggest that encouraging better and weaker students to interact more could be Pareto-improving

A note on the Mare model

For the analysis of changes in educational inequality, several quantitative methods have been developed in educational research. One of them is the school transition model (also known as the Mare model). The school transition model has been criticised on many grounds in recent years. In the following, I introduce the advantages of this model, its analytic conception, its critique and explain why this critique is not such a big problem in empirical analyses as is generally assumed. Finally, I give a summary.:1. Introduction 2. Advantages of the Mare model 3. Statistical conception of the Mare model 4. Critique of the Mare model 5. Summar

Education Across the life course

"There is a huge demand for high-quality longitudinal educational research in Germany. In particular, there is a clear need for both analytical and methodological progress in order to understand educational pathways through the life course and how they lead to different outcomes. This paper identifies the theoretical and methodological challenges of studying education across the life course and describes the structure of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) in Germany." (author's abstract

Changes in the division of labor within highly educated German couples when the first child is born

"When becoming parents for the first time, German couples often adapt their division of paid and unpaid work, creating a more gender-specific allocation. Using longitudinal data from the qualitative event-centered project 'Household division of domestic labor as a process', we compare theoretically-postulated mechanisms of change in the division of work within couples with explanations given by the couples interviewed themselves. Our qualitative analysis demonstrates that economic and gender norm theories are quite successful at predicting changes towards a more traditional specialization when couples become parents for the first time, while they are less helpful in explaining the persistence of equal arrangements in the domestic division of work, or the change towards more equal arrangements. The interviews also show that the explanations which differentiate - within unpaid work - between childcare and housework are a better predictor of the realities of the arrangements. Furthermore, the causal order of the decisions suggested by the theories differs from the couples' actual decision making processes: when facing the transition to parenthood, they decide first upon the division of childcare, and then of labor market activity and housework." (author's abstract)"Wenn Paare in Deutschland Eltern werden, verändern sie häufig ihre Aufteilung von bezahlter und unbezahlter Arbeit in Richtung eines geschlechtsspezifischen Arrangements. Auf Basis von qualitativen, ereigniszentrierten Längsschnittdaten des Projektes 'Innerfamiliale Arbeitsteilung als Prozess' vergleicht der vorliegende Artikel theoretische Annahmen zu Veränderungen der Arbeitsteilung in Paarbeziehungen mit den Erklärungen, die hochgebildete Paare selbst geben. Unsere qualitative Analyse zeigt, dass sowohl ökonomische als auch Gender-Theorien relativ erfolgreich erklären, warum Paare sich für eine eher traditionelle Spezialisierung der Arbeiten entscheiden, wenn sie den Übergang zur Erstelternschaft erleben. Diese Theorien sind hingegen weniger erfolgreich darin, zu erklären, warum Paare egalitäre Arrangements beibehalten oder wählen. Anhand der qualitativen Interviews wird ersichtlich, dass Erklärungsmuster, die im Bereich der unbezahlten Arbeit zwischen Kinderbetreuung und Hausarbeit unterscheiden, besser die Realität der Paare erfassen. Darüber hinaus ist die von den Theorien vorgeschlagene kausale Reihenfolge der Entscheidungen eine andere als die der Paare: im Übergang zur Elternschaft entscheiden werdende Eltern zunächst über die Kinderbetreuung und dann über Erwerbstätigkeit und Hausarbeit." (Autorenreferat