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This paper introduces new models for comparing several social mobility tables that provide various one-degree-of-freedom tests for two mobility tables on substantively meaningful structural components. These components include differences between mobility tables in (1) the strength of off-diagonal associations, (2) the strength of diagonal effects, and (3) the extent of structural mobility. Most of the models in this paper use association models and the Sobel-Hout-Duncan model but are specifically formulated to analyze three-way tables that have either nations or periods as the third dimension. American, British, and Japanese mobility tables are compared. Together, they show that equality of occupational opportunity is larger for the United States than for Great Britain, that Japan's mobility structure is closer to quasi-independence than that of the two other nations, and that Japan's mobility structure became more like that of the United States in 1975 rather than in 1955. These analyses also demonstrate that comparative mobility research based on indexing mobility has strong limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan, unlike in most other industrialized societies, the decline in marriage rates has been most pronounced among highly educated women. Theoretical interpretations of this distinctive pattern of change have typically emphasized increasing economic independence for women and reductions in the gains to marriage. In this paper, the authors develop and evaluate an alternative explanation that emphasizes women's continued dependence on men's economic resources and decline in the relative supply of highly educated men. Using data from four rounds of the Japanese National Fertility Survey, the authors decompose the observed decline in marriage rates into changes in the propensity to marry and changes in the educational composition of the marriage market. Results indicate that change in the availability of potential spouses accounts for one-fourth of the decline in marriage among university-educated women and explains a substantial proportion of the growing educational differences in marriage. The conclusion is that the relatively large decline in marriage among highly educated Japanese women likely reflects both increasing economic independence and continued economic dependence on men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most societies, there is an ongoing contest over who is the "we," to whom specific moral obligations apply, and who is the "they," to whom they do not. This paper explores and contrasts the most blatant forms of active exclusion, which includes genocide, and indirect exclusion, which is characterized by subtle forms of exclusion through social invisibility. In genocide, the targeted groups are not simply excluded from life integrity rights, but offenses against them are explicitly encouraged, rewarded, and sanctioned by the regime. In indirect exclusion, the exclusion is implicit in cultural and institutional practices and is often unintentional. I examine the difficulties and dilemmas involved in resisting and preventing active exclusion and in challenging the cultural codes that maintain indirect exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The elite coalition that pushes local industrial growth is composed of six actors: local state, business, and party and national state, business, and party. The question of which dominates the coalition reflects current debates about the structure of power in capitalist society. This paper addresses these debates through the detailed study of a growth coalition in a rural industrialization project in southern Japan. It traces the strategies and modes of influence of the six actors, their structure and process, through the 25-year history of the project. Contrary to the "strong state" image of Japan, national big business dominated the growth coalition. The rest of the society, including the state, adjusted around its motion. This resulted in policies which favored economic growth over social needs, giving some of the other actors legitimation problems. Yet, success at rapid growth prevented these from assuming crisis proportions. The findings run counter to state autonomy arguments and suggest closer attention be paid to multiple levels of structure and process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese women participate in the labor force at rates similar to women in Western industrial nations, but gender stratification patterns are sharper. Women in Japan are less apt to work as employees, a tendency that increases with age. Likewise, female employees tend to shift from larger to smaller firms across the life Cycle, whereas male employees do not. These aggregate pallets imply that Japanese women are seldom placed in career-track positions in large firms early in their careers. Analyses on labor market entry data from the 1984 "Survey on Work Patterns" substantiate this view. Although Japanese men and women enter large firms at equivalent rates upon leaving school, 22 percent of men and only 7 percent of women enter career ladders. The majority of women enter large firms as clerical workers, three-quarters of whom are in low-level "assistant clerical" positions. Causal processes governing entrance to large firms and career tracks are examined in the paper, with particular attention to the relative returns to different levels and types of education for Japanese men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]