Projects
Capital Transfer
As women increasingly have advantages in educational attainment over men, can education serve as an equalizer of gender income inequalities? An overall response from prior literature is that despite the advantages in education, women still face disadvantages in personal income. We address this puzzle from two perspectives. First, an embeddedness perspective predicts that women’s acceptance of traditional gender norms results in the underutilization of education- related human capital. Second, an economically rational perspective predicts that women’s underutilization can lead to benefits at the family level. Using data from Chinese General Social Survey and Japanese General Social Survey, our analysis supports both perspectives.
The Creation of Social Capital
By synthesizing a structural perspective and an individual agentic perspective, this study proposes a new model of social capital with special relevance to stratification and inequalities.
Educational aspirations
Due to cultural values, especially Confucianism, Chinese parents on average have high educational aspirations for their children. Nevertheless, rational considerations—such as academic performance and economic return—are also salient for parental aspirations in modern China. Incorporating a cultural with a rational perspective, this study examines the extent to which Chinese parents’ educational aspirations are influenced by cultural beliefs and based on rational considerations.
Improved Present, Unchangeable Past
Hiring decision holds the key to shaping labor market outcomes, and the hiring decision-makers are the “gatekeepers”; individual careers are strongly influenced by their affiliated organizations. This study investigates how affiliation upward mobility affects individual career outcomes. We examine two types of affiliation upward mobility--educational credentials and work experiences--in elite investment banking recruitment.
