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Abstract: Disruptive events have significant consequences for the individuals and families who experience them, but these effects do not occur equally across the population. While some groups are strongly affected, others experience few consequences. We review recent findings on inequality in the effects of disruptive events. We consider heterogeneity based on socioeconomic resources, race/ethnicity, the likelihood of experiencing disruption, and contextual factors such as the normativity of the event in particular social settings. We focus on micro‐level events affecting specific individuals and families, including divorce, job loss, home loss and eviction, health shocks and deaths, and violence and incarceration, but also refer to macro‐level events such as recession and natural disasters. We describe patterns of variation that suggest a process of resource disparities and cumulative disadvantage versus those that reflect the impact of non‐normative and unexpected shocks. Finally, we review methodological considerations when examining variation in the effect of disruptive events.

This article distinguishes three measures of intergenerational economic mobility that emerge when the population is divided into groups: overall individual mobility, within-group mobility, and between-group mobility. We clarify their properties and the relationship between them. We then evaluate Clark's use of surname between-group persistence as a preferred measure of intergenerational mobility in the book "The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility." We show that aggregate surname-level intergenerational persistence cannot be compared with individual persistence because group-level income averages captures diverse individual-level and group-level factors impossible to disentangle without additional identifying information. Furthermore, measures of group persistence do not address the problem of measurement error leading to attenuation bias, which is Clark's rationale to study surname mobility. An empirical example partitioning the population into groups based on racial/ethnic origins and a simulation clarify the relationship between these different measures of mobility.

The COVID‐19 pandemic was accompanied by social and economic changes previously associated with fertility delay and reduction, sparking widespread discussion of a "baby bust" in the United States. We examine fertility trends using restricted vital statistics data from California, a diverse population of 40 million, contributing 12 percent of U.S. births. Using time series models that account for longer‐run fertility trends, we observe modest, short‐term reductions in births from mid‐2020 through early 2021. Birth counts in subsequent months matched or even eased the pace of fertility decline since the 2008 recession and are unlikely a function of the pandemic alone. Responses to the pandemic were heterogeneous. Fertility declined markedly among the foreign‐born population, largely driven by changes in net migration. Among the U.S.‐born population, the short‐term pandemic‐attributable reductions were largest among older, highly educated people, suggesting mechanisms of fertility reduction disparately accessible to those with the most resources. We find no evidence of a strong population fertility response to the pandemic's accompanying employment shock, providing additional evidence of a growing divide between macroeconomic conditions and fertility patterns in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown that intergenerational mobility is higher among individuals with a college degree than those with lower levels of schooling. However, mobility declines among graduate degree holders. This finding questions the meritocratic power of higher education. Prior research has been hampered, however, by the small samples of advanced degree holders in representative surveys. Drawing on a large longitudinal data set of PhD holders--the Survey of Doctorate Recipients--this study examines intergenerational mobility among the American educational elite, separately for men and women and different racial/ethnic groups. Results show substantial mobility among PhD holders. The association between parents' education and adult children's earnings is moderate among men and nonexistent among women with doctoral degrees. However, women's earnings converge to an average level that is much lower than men's, signaling ''perverse openness'' for women even at the top of the educational distribution. Among men, there is variation in mobility by race and ethnicity. The intergenerational socioeconomic association is null for Asian men, small for white and black men, and more pronounced for Hispanics. Educational and occupational mediators account for intergenerational association among blacks and whites but not Hispanic men. A doctoral degree largely detaches individuals from their social origins in the United States, but it does not eliminate all sources of inequality.

Does participation in one wave of a survey have an effect on respondents' answers to questions in subsequent waves? In this article, we investigate the presence and magnitude of "panel conditioning" effects in one of the most frequently used data sets in the social sciences: the General Social Survey (GSS). Using longitudinal records from the 2006, 2008, and 2010 surveys, we find convincing evidence that at least some GSS items suffer from this form of bias. To rule out the possibility of contamination due to selective attrition and/or unobserved heterogeneity, we strategically exploit a series of between-person comparisons across time-in-survey groups. This methodology, which can be implemented whenever researchers have access to at least three waves of rotating panel data, is described in some detail so as to facilitate future applications in data sets with similar design elements.

This paper analyzes the socioeconomic stratification of achievement in the Chilean voucher system using a census of 4th and 8th graders, a multilevel methodology, and accounting for unobserved selectivity into school sector. Findings indicate that the association between the school's aggregate family socioeconomic status (SES) and test scores is much greater in the private-voucher sector than in the public one, resulting in marked socioeconomic stratification of test scores in the Chilean voucher system. We also find that the amount of tuition fees paid by parents in private-voucher schools has no bearing on test scores, after controlling for the socioeconomic makeup of the school. Implications of these findings for educational inequality in the context of a universal voucher system are discussed. (Contains 10 tables.)

Research in the industrialized world shows that the influence of family background on educational attainment has remained stable or declined over time. In contrast, very little is known about the developing world. Using high-quality data sets and a standard protocol, this article offers a comparative analysis of trends in educational stratification in four Latin American countries--Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. Latin America provides an interesting case study because the economic crisis and structural adjustment in the 1980s led to declines in family income, which may have resulted in growing inequality of educational opportunity. Findings are consistent with this hypothesis. They show a marked increase in socioeconomic inequality at the secondary and postsecondary levels for the cohorts that experienced the economic crisis. In addition, there is a decline in inequality in the lower educational transitions, which is explained by their universalization, a reduced advantage of males, and in some cases a growing advantage of females. (Contains 7 tables, 8 figures, and 12 notes.)