Shifting Tides: The Evolution of Racial Inequality in Higher Education from the 1980s through the 2010s.

Amid the proliferation of state-level bans on race-based affirmative action in higher education, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on June 29, 2023, dismantled race-conscious college admission policies, intensifying concerns about the persistence and potential increase of racial inequality in higher education. The authors analyze four restricted-use national survey datasets to investigate racial disparities in college attendance outcomes from the 1980s through the 2010s. Although college entrance rates increased for all racial groups, Black and Hispanic youth became increasingly less likely than their White peers to attend four-year selective colleges. In the 2010s cohort, Black and Hispanic youth were 8 and 7 percentage points, respectively, less likely than their White counterparts to secure admission to four-year selective colleges, even after controlling for parents' income, education, and other family background variables. The findings underscore the urgent need for proactive policy interventions to address the widening racial inequality in attending selective postsecondary institutions.

Inequality among the Disadvantaged? Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Earnings among Young Men and Women without a College Education.

Despite the rapid expansion of higher education, many young adults still enter the labor market without a college education. However, little research has focused on racial/ethnic earnings disadvantages faced by non-college-educated youth. We analyze the restricted-use data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 to examine racial/ethnic earnings disparities among non-college-educated young men and women in their early 20s as of 2016, accounting for differences in premarket factors and occupation with an extensive set of controls. Results suggest striking earnings disadvantages for Black men relative to white, Latinx, and Asian men. Compared to white men, Latinx and Asian men do not earn significantly less, yet their earnings likely differ substantially by ethnic origin. While racial/ethnic earnings gaps are less prominent among women than men, women of all racial/ethnic groups have earnings disadvantages compared to white men. The results call for future studies into the heterogeneity within racial/ethnic groups and the intersectionality of race/ethnicity and gender among non-college-educated young adults.

Taste-based gender discrimination in South Korea.

Among the countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, South Korea shows the worst female earnings disadvantage. Women's career disruption associated with marriage and childbearing is said to be the primary factor behind the huge female disadvantage in Korea. Recent studies, however, demonstrated that substantial female disadvantage appears prior to women's career disruption, even net of human capital covariates. In this study, we examine whether taste-based gender discrimination is a source of female earnings disadvantage. We use sex ratios of births across regions during the 1990s as a proxy of prejudice against women in current labor markets. Our empirical results show that female earnings disadvantages among 2009-2017 college graduates are larger in the regions where sex ratios of 1990-1999 newborns were higher. Our results are robust to the control of an extensive set of human capital variables, including concrete college names, detailed fields of study, high school types, and more. Depending on models, one-fourth to one-third of female earnings disadvantage is attributable to prejudice against women. Implications of these findings are discussed.

(Il)legality and psychosocial well-being: Central Asian migrant women in Russia.

Legal status has shown far-reaching consequences for international migrants' incorporation trajectories and outcomes in Western contexts. In dialogue with the extant research, we examine the implications of legal status for subjective well-being of Central Asian migrant women in the Russian Federation. Using survey data collected through respondent-driven sampling in two large cities, we compare migrants with regularized and irregular legal statuses on several interrelated yet distinct dimensions of subjective well-being. We find that, regardless of other factors, regularized status has a strong positive association with migrants' perception of their rights and freedoms but not with their feeling of being respected in society. Regularized status is positively associated with self-efficacy and negatively with depression. Yet, no net legal status difference is found in migrants' views on their relations with other migrants or on treatment of migrants by native-borns. The findings are situated within the cross-national scholarship on the ramifications of racialized immigrant (il)legality and its implications for membership and belonging.

The Contradictions of Liminal Legality: Economic Attainment and Civic Engagement of Central American Immigrants on Temporary Protected Status.

This study examines how Temporary Protected Status (TPS) may shape immigrants' integration trajectories. Building on core themes identified in the immigrant incorporation scholarship, it investigates whether associations of educational attainment with labor market outcomes and with civic participation, which are well established in the general population, hold for immigrants who live in the "liminal legality" of TPS. Conducted in 2016 in five U.S. metropolitan areas, the study is based on a unique survey of Salvadoran and Honduran TPS holders, the majority of immigrants on this status. The analyses find that TPS holders with higher levels of educational attainment do not derive commensurate significant occupational or earnings premiums from their education. In contrast, the analysis of the relationship between educational attainment and civic engagement detects a positive association: more educated TPS holders are more likely to be members of community organizations and to participate in voluntary community service, compared to their less educated counterparts. These findings illustrate the contradictions inherent to TPS as it may hinder certain aspects of immigrant integration but not others. This examination contributes to our understanding of the implications of immigrants' legal statuses and of immigration law and policy for key aspects of immigrant integration trajectories.

When leaving is normal and staying is novel: Men's labor migration and women's employment in rural Mozambique.

Considerable cross-national research has examined the impact of international labor migration on livelihoods in sending households and communities. Although findings vary across contexts, the general underlying assumption of this research is that migration represents a novel income-generating alternative to local employment. While engaging with this assumption, we also argue that in many sending communities where labor migration has been going on for generations, it is the decision not to migrate and instead to pursue local livelihood opportunities that might constitute a true departure from the expected behavior. Importantly, both the decisions to migrate and not to migrate are part of a household strategy shaped by gendered negotiation and bargaining. Building on these propositions, we use rich survey data from rural Mozambique, a typical setting of long-established large-scale international male labor out-migration, to examine married women's gainful employment outside subsistence agriculture as it relates to their husbands' migration or local work. We find a somewhat lower likelihood of employment among migrants' wives, compared with nonmigrants' wives, and this pattern strengthens with increased duration of migration. However, we also find substantial differences among nonmigrants' wives: women married to locally employed men have themselves by far the highest probability of employment, while wives of nonemployed men are no different from migrants' wives, net of other factors. These findings are discussed in light of interconnected gendered complexities of both migration-related and local labor market constraints and choices.

Going Places: Effects of Early U.S. Compulsory Schooling Laws on Internal Migration.

Both the industrialization thesis and institutional theories of education hypothesize that early educational expansion increased internal migration. We take advantage of state variation in early U.S. compulsory schooling laws and use a regression discontinuity approach to test this hypothesis in 1860-1950 Census data. Results indicate that those required to attend school were more likely to leave their state of birth than others. Effects were stronger among men in states with low occupational status scores, suggesting education encouraged migration out of states with fewer occupational opportunities. Potential contemporary implications for the U.S. and developing countries are discussed.

Broken promise of college? New educational sorting mechanisms for intergenerational association in the 21st century.

Previous studies have shown that intergenerational socioeconomic association becomes weaker as children's education level increases and is negligible among college graduates. A college degree is known as the great equalizer for intergenerational socioeconomic mobility. Recent studies, however, reported that the strong intergenerational association reemerges among advanced degree holders although it stays weak among BA-only holders. Despite the substantial theoretical importance and policy implications, the mechanisms behind the reemergence of the intergenerational association at the post-baccalaureate level have been less studied. In this paper, we examine the association between parents' education and children's earnings using the 2010, 2013, 2015, and 2017 National Survey of College Graduates data. Our results show that the strong intergenerational socioeconomic immobility among advanced degree holders is fully attributable to three educational sorting mechanisms: children from high-SES families (1) obtain expensive and financially rewarding advanced degrees, (2) attend selective institutions and major in hyper-lucrative fields of study such as law and medicine in graduate school, and (3) complete their education at a younger age and enjoy income growth over more years in the labor market. Implications of these findings are discussed.