In China, as in other nations, reading skills depend mainly on the level of education attained. But reading skills in China depend on other factors as well: the quality of schooling; the cultural capital of the family of origin–parental education, of course, but also such measures of cultural capital as the number of books in the household and the reading behavior of parents; gender; and the extent to which literacy is used over the life course. I exploit data from a 1996 national probability sample of Chinese Adults (N=6,090) that includes information on literacy (the number of characters identified from a list of 10 characters), measures of family cultural capital, and the usual socioeconomic data on both respondents and their families of origin, to study the determinants of the number of characters recognized. My analysis includes three components: (1) An overall assessment of the determinants of literacy in the adult population of China In addition to years of schooling, a number of factors positively affect literacy: father’s years of schooling; the “cultural capital” of parents, manifest in their reading behavior; urban residence at age 14; and male gender. Further, the effect of father’s education is entirely mediated by the effect of family cultural capital. (2) The effect of occupational experience on literacy. Net of education, those with non-manual jobs gain in literacy over the life course whereas the literacy of those with manual jobs declines. The fact that the two trends go in opposite directions suggests an age as opposed to period interpretation of the results. (3) An assessment of the effect of the Cultural Revolution on literacy. Net of years of schooling, those educated during the Cultural Revolution (especially the first years) are less literate than those educated before or after the Cultural Revolution, and the effect of the Cultural Revolution is larger in magnitude than the effect of an additional year of schooling.

Racial differences in child mortality in South Africa are studied using household-level data from 1987-89 and 1998. Piecewise exponential regression models are estimated to explore the determinants of observed racial disparities in children's survival chances. We conclude that inequalities in the personal and household resources of South Africa’s four main racial groups substantially account for racial differences in child survival rates, and that the 1994 dismantling of the apartheid system will not eradicate the racial disparity in child mortality unless persisting and dramatic racial inequities in basic levels of living are radically reduced.

The Chinese household registration system (hukou), which divides the population into “agricultural” and “non-agricultural” sectors, may be the most important determinant of differential privilege in state socialist China, determining access to good jobs, education for one’s children, housing, and health care, and (formally, although no longer in practice) even the right to move to a city. Hukou mobility, with its attendant consequences for life chances, is difficult to accomplish. Using data from a 1996 national probability sample, we show that education and communist party membership are the main determinants of such mobility.

The Chinese household registration system (hukou) may be the most important determinant of differential privilege in state socialist China. Urban registrants are entitled to the best jobs, education, housing, and health care -- all of which are unavailable to those with rural registration. Thus, transforming one's hukou status from rural to urban is a central aspect of upward mobility. But given that hukou status is essentially ascribed at birth, how do rural hukou holders affect this change to urban status? Using data from a 1996 national probability sample, we found that education, communist party membership, and military service are the main determinants of rural-to-urban status changes.

Using data from Szelenyi and Treiman’s 1993 six-nation survey of Social Stratification in Eastern Europe, we find that the transformation from socialism substantially restored precommunist property relations in the five Eastern European countries studied here (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia). Continuity between the pre- and postcommunist period with respect to property ownership can be attributed (1) to property holdings remaining intact throughout the communist period; (2) to the restitution of property to the original owners or their heirs in the post-communist period; and (3) to the achievement of highstatus occupations during the communist period which facilitated the acquisition of property during that period. Business ownership in post-communist Eastern Europe is linked directly to pre-communist property holding only in Hungary and Bulgaria, although there are indications that pre-communist property holdings exerted an indirect effect on post-communist business ownership by enhancing the odds of attaining elite occupations during the communist period.

Using data from Szelenyi and Treiman’s 1993 six-nation survey of Social Stratification in Eastern Europe, we replicate and extend Walder, Li, and Treiman’s (2000) paper showing different paths into the Chinese urban elite for professionals and cadres. For each of six formerly communist nations (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Slovakia), we find effects quite similar to those shown by Walder, Li, and Treiman for China: education is a more important determinant of recruitment to professional positions than to cadre positions and communist party membership is a more important determinant of recruitment to cadre than to professional positions. Unlike patterns of elite recruitment in China, however, we find virtually no detectable differences in patterns of elite recruitment over time, contrary to the conventional wisdom of students of Eastern European communism.

This paper studies the effect of remittances sent home by South African Black labor migrants on children’s schooling. We use cross-sectional data from the 1993-1994 Integrated Household Survey and panel data from 2002 and 2003 South African Labor Force Survey. We find that both labor migration and the likelihood of sending remittances home are much more prevalent among Blacks than among other racial groups, and thus restrict our study of the impact of migration and remittances on children’s education to Blacks. Receipt of remittances substantially increases the likelihood that children are in school, through three pathways: increased household educational spending, reduced child labor, and mitigation of the negative effect of parental absence due to out-migration. Also, remittances sharply differentiate labor migrant households. Children in households without remittances are disadvantaged compared to recipient households, and in some respect are even worse-off than their counterparts in nonmigrant households, primarily due to the deleterious effect of parental out-migration with no economic compensation. Sensitivity tests using fixed-effect and random-effect modeling show that the effect of labor migration and remittances is robust to unobserved heterogeneity and relatively consistent across subsamples and independent samples over time, although the negative effect of living in households with out-migrants but no remittances is substantially by 2002-2003, due at least in part to relaxed migration policies after the breakdown of apartheid. The paper also assesses the social consequences of remittances. We find that remittances help reduce intra-familial gender inequalities as well as inter-familial SES inequalities in schooling.

Using data from a 1996 national probability sample of Chinese men, the effect of family background on occupational mobility in contemporary China is analyzed, with particular attention to the rural-urban institutional divide. China has an unusually high degree of mobility into agriculture and also, apparently, unusual “openness” in the urban population. Both patterns are explained by China’s distinctive population registration system, which simultaneously fails to protect peasants from downward mobility and permits only the best educated rural men to attain urban residential status, resulting in severe sample selection bias in previous studies restricted to the de jure urban population. New light is shed on the relationships between the socialist state and social fluidity and between inequality and mobility.

Using data from a 1996 national probability sample of Chinese men, the effect of family background on occupational mobility in contemporary China is analyzed, with particular attention to the rural-urban institutional divide. China has an unusually high degree of mobility into agriculture and also, apparently, unusual “openness” in the urban population. Both patterns are explained by China’s distinctive household registration system, which simultaneously fails to protect peasants from downward mobility and permits only the best educated rural men to attain urban residential status, resulting in severe sample selection bias in previous studies restricted to the de jure urban population.