Sociopolitical change and inequality in educational opportunity: Impact of family background and institutional factors on educational attainment (1940-2001)

Chinese Sociology and Anthropology

Volumn 38, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 6-36

  Li, Chunling ^a  

^a CHINESE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES   (China)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33846291893     PISSN: 00094625     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2753/CSA0009-4625380401     Document Type: Review

References (22)

1. Zhong Deng and Donald J. Treiman, "The Impact of Cultural Revolution on Trends in Educational Attainment in the People's Republic of China," American Journal of Sociology 103 (1997): 391.
2. See also Alan C. Kerckhoff, "Institutional Arrangements and Stratification Processes in Industrial Societies," Annual Review of Sociology 21(1995): 323-47;
3. Donald J. Treiman and Kam-Bor Yip, "Educational and Occupational Attainment in Twenty-One Countries," in Cross-National Research in Sociology, ed. Melvin L. Kohn (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1989), 373-94;
4. Yossi Shavit and Hans-Peter Blossfeld, eds., Persistent Inequality: Changing Educational Attainment in Thirteen Countries (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993).
5. Pierre Bourdieu, "Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction," in Power and Ideology in Education, ed. Jerome Karabel and A.H. Halsey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 487-511;
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8. Albert Simkus and Rudolf Andorka, "Educational Attainment in Hungary," American Sociological Review 47 (1982): 740-51.
9. Frank Parkin, Class Inequality and Political Order: Social Stratification in Capitalist and Socialist Societies (New York: Praeger, 1971).
10. Shavit and Blossfeld, Persistent Inequality.
11. Deng and Treiman, "The Impact of Cultural Revolution on Trends in Educational Attainment in the P.R.C.," 391-428.
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20. In other related studies, the index of whether the person him/herself is a Communist Party member is usually used to measure an individual's political capital or the index of whether the father is a Communist Party member is used to measure the family's political capital. However, concerning children's opportunities in education, the class status of the family, as the indication of how much political capital the family possesses, had more tangible influence. The classification of family class status was more detailed than the classification of party member and non-party member and, as a measurement indicator, it embodied more information and greater accuracy. However, it is noticeable that family class status as a kind of political capital mainly exerted its role in the period before economic reform, and the embodiment of so-called political capital has undergone fundamental changes since the beginning of the economic reform. The changes themselves also reflect the relationship between politics and the distribution of educational opportunities.
21. Many people received their education or earned their degrees in some nonformal adult education institution (such as vocational college, evening college, or university, correspondence university, or privately run college or university). Others received their education or training while staying on the job and usually took many more years to obtain such academic credentials or degrees as secondary technical school, junior college, or college and university than one would in the formal education system. These people would spend more years getting an education but obtained academic credentials that are not of a high level. However, from the human capital measurement angle, the real worth of formal education is clearly greater than that of nonformal adult education. Therefore, in the calculation of an individual's years of education, multiply the fixed number of years of nonformal, inservice adult education by half.
22. The influence of family class status on an individual's educational opportunity is mainly reflected in secondary and higher education. Most of the cohorts born between 1951 and 1960 received their secondary and higher education in the late 1960s and 1970s while most of the cohorts born between 1961 and 1970 received their secondary and higher education at the end of the 1970s and the 1980s.