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The paper analyses the relationship between social origin and educational attainment over time in Italy. A previous work by the same authors showed that the association between class of origin and educational attainment has declined for the cohorts born from 1920 to 1969, while most of the previous research showed persistent class inequality. The paper compares models and results obtained by previous research with those obtained with the cumulative logit model and shows that differences in findings are mostly a matter of interpretation. When family's education is used as an alternative measure of social origin, its effect on educational attainment is also found to be decreasing over time. Some conjectures are then developed concerning the various mechanisms underlying the effects of social class of origin and family's education on educational attainment, and a four-variable model is estimated, allowing comparison of both effects over time. Results show that, consistently with theoretical conjectures, the effect of class of origin diminishes over time, while that of family's education, controlling for class of origin, remains stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Vila's (1994) perspective, better maternal and infant health care will be reflected in reduced crime rates a generation later. We tested this hypothesis by exploring the relationship between the rates of infant mortality and the lagged rates of homicide (20 years later), controlling for gross domestic product in the 95 Italian provinces. The variables are measured at three points in time : in the middle of the seventies, in the middle of the eighties and in the middle of the nineties. We used LISREL to evaluate the model suggested by the hypotheses; the "nurturance" hypothesis was corroborated by the results on homicide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the relationship between class of origin and educational attainment over time in Italy. The key question is whether the overall educational expansion that has occurred in the country has also brought about a lessening in the inequality of educational opportunities by social class of origin. The analysis treats educational titles as ordered categories and models educational attainment by class of origins and cohort using cumulative logits (ordinal regression). Differences in educational attainment depend on the parameters locating the cumulative logistic distribution of educational titles for a class and a cohort and on the location of the «separators» between educational levels. This type of statistical model explicitly allows investigation of how differences among countries in the structure of the educational system and in the educational expansion affect inequality of educational opportunities.,We consider cohorts born between 1920 and 1969, four educational titles and six social classes. Results show a decrease of inequality across cohorts: this is true for both the agricultural and the urban classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]