Significance We document a rapid increase in income inequality China’s recent past, capitalizing on newly available survey data collected by several Chinese university organizations. By now, not only surpasses that of the United States large margin but also ranks among highest world, especially comparison with countries comparable or higher standards living. argue current high is significantly driven structural factors attributable to political system, main determinants being rural-urban...

The children of high-income parents often become adults, while their low-income peers adults. Education plays a central role in this intergenerational income persistence. Because education-based inequalities grew recent decades, many scholars predicted that persistence would increase. However, previous research suggests it remained stable across cohorts. We address puzzle. Analyzing National Longitudinal Surveys Youth data, we find growing educational inequality by parental income, along...

Intergenerational mobility is higher among college graduates than people with lower levels of education. In light this finding, researchers have characterized a degree as great equalizer leveling the playing field, and proposed that expanding education would promote mobility. This line reasoning rests on implicit assumption relatively high observed reflects causal effect completion intergenerational mobility, an has rarely been rigorously evaluated. article bridges gap. Using novel...

This study examines trends in intergenerational class mobility China by analyzing six comparable, nationally representative surveys between 1996 and 2012. Defying a simplistic, unidirectional account, the authors report two countervailing social postrevolution China. On one hand, find decline fluidity following China's transition from state socialism to market economy, as link origin destination vertical status has significantly strengthened. other horizontal agricultural nonagricultural...

Significance Accompanying a sharp rise in economic inequality China since its reform, two countercurrents characterize the trends China’s intergenerational social mobility. On one hand, industrialization postreform has promoted occupational other both mobility net of and educational have trended downward, reaching levels similar to those United States most recent cohort. In earlier cohorts, whereas for Chinese men was unusually high, particularly limited women from rural hukou origin.

Abstract Causal mediation analysis aims to examine the role of a mediator or group mediators that lie in pathway between an exposure and outcome. Recent biomedical studies often involve large number potential based on high‐throughput technologies. Most current analytic methods focus settings with one moderate mediators. With expanding growth ‐omics data, joint molecular‐level genomics data epidemiological through is becoming more common. However, such requires can simultaneously accommodate...

College yields the highest long-term economic returns for most and least advantaged men.

The study of causal mechanisms abounds in political science, and mediation analysis has grown rapidly across different subfields. Yet, conventional methods for analyzing are difficult to use when the effect interest involves multiple mediators that potentially causally dependent—a common scenario science applications. This article introduces a general framework tracing paths with mediators. In this framework, total treatment on an outcome is decomposed into set path-specific effects (PSEs)....

How does higher education shape the Black-White earnings gap? It may help close gap if Black youth benefit more from attending and completing college than do White youth. On other hand, college-goers are less likely to complete relative students, this disparity in degree completion helps reproduce racial inequality. In study, we use a novel causal decomposition debiased machine learning method isolate, quantify, explain equalizing stratifying roles of college. Analyzing data NLSY97, find...

Significance Assortative mating, the tendency of men and women who marry to have similar social characteristics, is a commonly observed phenomenon in human societies. This study shows that assortative mating could result from structural causes independent agents’ preference, because unmarried persons newly enter marriage are systematically different those married earlier. Thus, selection, not by rational choice, but dynamics structures.

Earnings inequality in urban China has grown rapidly the past two decades. During same period, composition of labor force been dramatically altered by three large-scale structural changes: (1) expansion tertiary education; (2) decline state sector employment; and (3) a surge rural-to-urban migration. In this article, I examine how these institutional demographic shifts have shaped recent upswing earnings inequality. Based on data from nationally representative surveys, use variance function...

Stratification and inequality are among the most central concepts in sociology, although related, they fundamentally distinct: refers to extent which resources distributed unevenly across individuals or between population subgroups, whereas stratification subgroups occupy distinct hierarchical layers within an overall resource distribution. Despite centrality of theories class structure, prior empirical studies have focused exclusively on measures inequality, do not accurately capture degree...

Abstract To understand patterns of social inequality, science research has typically relied on statistical models linking the conditional mean an outcome variable to a set explanatory factors. A prime example this approach is Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder (KOB) method. By fitting two linear separately for advantaged group and disadvantaged group, KOB method decomposes between-group disparity into parts: part explained by differences in background characteristics, unexplained often dubbed ‘residual...

The Chinese government has actively encouraged and invested in the growth of Internet to capture technology's vast commercial potential, while exerting state control. Even before country was fully connected global "network networks," China began implement programs that would facilitate e-government. Despite some valuable examinations e-government China, no studies were found systematically explored content both national provincial Web sites. This study fills gap literature by analyzing...

/ The current study introduces Hofstede's cultural dimensions into framing research by conducting a cross-cultural comparative analysis of news coverage the Internet in China from 2000 to 2004 Hong Kong, Singapore, US and UK. Differences were found terms both salience Internet-related issues use frames across societies. patterns influence with interaction effects varied different types generic (i.e. human interest, conflict, responsibility, morality economic consequences). dimension...

We investigate the dynamic relationship between residential choices of individuals and resulting long-term aggregate segregation patterns, allowing for feedback effects macrolevel neighborhood conditions on choices. reinterpret past survey data whites’ attitudes about desired neighborhoods as revealing large heterogeneity in tolerance black neighbors. Through agent-based modeling, we improve a previous model racial by introducing individual-level tolerance. Our predicts, long run, lower...

Since the seminal introduction of propensity score (PS) by Rosenbaum and Rubin, PS-based methods have been widely used for drawing causal inferences in behavioral social sciences. However, PS approach depends on ignorability assumption: there are no unobserved confounders once observed covariates taken into account. For situations where this assumption may be violated, Heckman his associates recently developed a novel based marginal treatment effects (MTEs). In article, we (1) explicate...

Political scientists are increasingly interested in causal mediation, and to this end, recent studies focus on estimating a quantity called the controlled direct effect (CDE). The CDE measures strength of relationship between treatment outcome when mediator is fixed at given value. To estimate CDE, Joffe Greene (2009) Vansteelandt developed method sequential g-estimation, which was introduced political science by Acharya, Blackwell, Sen (2016). In letter, we propose an alternative...

We offer a propensity score perspective to interpret and analyze the marginal treatment effect (MTE). Specifically, we redefine MTE as expected conditional on latent variable representing unobserved resistance treatment. As with original MTE, redefined can be used building block for constructing standard causal estimands. The weights associated new however, are simpler, more intuitive, easier compute. Moreover, immediately reveals heterogeneity among individuals at margin of treatment,...

An essential feature common to all empirical social research is variability across units of analysis. Individuals differ not only in background characteristics but also how they respond a particular treatment, intervention, or stimulation. Moreover, individuals may self-select into treatment on the basis anticipated effects. To study heterogeneous effects presence self-selection, Heckman and Vytlacil developed structural approach that builds marginal effect (MTE). In this article, we extend...

Analyses of causal mediation are often complicated by treatment-induced confounders the mediator-outcome relationship. In presence such confounders, natural direct and indirect effects treatment on outcome, into which total effect can be additively decomposed, not identified. An alternative but similar set effects, known as randomized intervention analogues to (rNDE) (rNIE), still identified in this situation, existing estimators for these require a weighting procedure that is difficult use...

Abstract Causal mediation analysis concerns the pathways through which a treatment affects an outcome. While most of literature focuses on settings with single mediator, flourishing line research has examined involving multiple mediators, under path-specific effects (PSEs) are often interest. We consider estimation PSEs when effect operates K(≥ 1) causally ordered, possibly multivariate mediators. In this setting, for many causal paths not nonparametrically identified, and we focus set that...

Abstract The college-educated are more likely to vote than those with less education. Prior research suggests that the effect of college attendance on voting operates directly, by increasing an individual’s interest and engagement in politics through social networks or human capital accumulation. College may also increase indirectly leading degree attainment socioeconomic status, thus facilitating political participation. However, few studies have empirically tested these direct indirect...

When making causal inferences, post-treatment confounders complicate analyses of time-varying treatment effects. Conditioning on these variables naively to estimate marginal effects may inappropriately block pathways and induce spurious associations between the outcome, leading bias. To avoid such bias, researchers often use structural models (MSMs) with inverse probability weighting (IPW). However, IPW requires for conditional distributions is highly sensitive their misspecification....