Gene-environment interaction analysis of school quality and educational inequality.

We study to what extent schools increase or decrease environmental and genetic influences on educational performance. Building on behavioral genetics literature on gene-environment interactions and sociological literature on the compensating and amplifying effects of schools on inequality, we investigate whether the role of genes and the shared environment is larger or smaller in higher-quality school environments. We apply twin models to Dutch administrative data on the educational performance of 18,384 same-sex and 11,050 opposite-sex twin pairs, enriched with data on the quality of primary schools. Our results show that school quality does not moderate genetic and shared-environmental influences on educational performance once the moderation by SES is considered. We find a gene-environment interplay for school SES: genetic variance decreases with increasing school SES. This school SES effect partly reflects parental SES influences. Yet, parental SES does not account for all the school SES moderation, suggesting that school-based processes play a role too.

Delayed tracking and inequality of opportunity: Gene-environment interactions in educational attainment.

There are concerns that ability tracking at a young age increases unequal opportunities for children of different socioeconomic background to develop their potential. To disentangle family influence and potential ability, we applied moderation models to twin data on secondary educational track level from the Netherlands Twin Register (N = 8847). Delaying tracking to a later age is associated with a lower shared environmental influence and a larger genetic influence on track level in adolescence. This is in line with the idea that delaying tracking improves equality of opportunity. Our results further suggest that this is mostly because delaying tracking reduces the indirect influence of family background on track level via the test performance of students. Importantly, delaying tracking improves the realization of genetic potential especially among students with low test scores, while it lowers shared environmental influence on track level for students of all test performance levels.

The reproduction of benefit receipt: Disentangling the intergenerational transmission.

Adult children of benefit recipients are more likely to also receive benefits themselves. This may be a spurious effect, resulting from similarities between parents and children, but it is also possible that parental benefit receipt generates more benefit recipiency among their offspring. Such a non-spurious effect may be due to children's educational attainment, information, beliefs, and norms about welfare or work. We analyse longitudinal administrative data on benefit receipt among parents and children in the Netherlands. We approach causality through the timing of parental benefit receipt, and find indications for a non-spurious effect on adult children's benefit receipt. Parental benefit receipt lowers the child's educational attainment, and this subsequently results in more benefit receipt. The remaining effect is more likely related to beliefs and norms than to information provision.

Ethnic Composition and Friendship Segregation: Differential Effects for Adolescent Natives and Immigrants.

Ethnically diverse settings provide opportunities for interethnic friendship but can also increase the preference for same-ethnic friendship. Therefore, same-ethnic friendship preferences, or ethnic homophily, can work at cross-purposes with policy recommendations to diversify ethnic representation in social settings. In order to effectively overcome ethnic segregation, we need to identify those factors within diverse settings that exacerbate the tendency toward ethnic homophily. Using unique data and multiple network analyses, the authors examine 529 adolescent friendship networks in English, German, Dutch, and Swedish schools and find that the ethnic composition of school classes relates differently to immigrant and native homophily. Immigrant homophily disproportionately increases as immigrants see more same-ethnic peers, and friendship density among natives has no effect on this. By contrast, native homophily remains relatively low until natives see dense groups of immigrants. The authors' results suggest that theories of interethnic competition and contact opportunities apply differently to ethnic majority and minority groups.

Sources of sibling (dis)similarity: total family impact on status variation in The Netherlands in the nineteenth century.

The authors describe and explain variation in the occupational status resemblance of brothers in The Netherlands during modernization. They test opposing hypotheses about how modernization processes influenced fraternal resemblance through the value and inequality of family resources based on a job competition model in combination with modernization theory, status maintenance theory, and dualism theory. The authors use the high-quality, large-scale database GENLIAS, yielding digitized information for approximately 450,000 linked Dutch marriage certificates from 250,000 families, complemented with historical indicators of six modernization processes for over 2,500 communities. Using multilevel meta-regression models, they find that brother correlations in status decreased slowly from about 1860 onward. Although this exactly parallels the period of modernization, the authors find that modernization processes were not responsible (except possibly urbanization and mass transportation). In fact, in line with dualism theory, fraternal resemblance increased with most processes (i.e., industrialization, educational expansion, in-migration, and mass communication) because they amplified in-equality.

Social support and the working hours of employed mothers in Europe: The relevance of the state, the workplace, and the family.

This paper studies the influence of state, workplace, and family support on the working hours of employed mothers and how these different support sources interact. Data taken from the European Social Survey 2004/2005 as well as country-specific information were used to estimate several hierarchical models. We find evidence that the availability of supportive workplace arrangements and family support positively impact the working hours of employed mothers and that state policies facilitating the traditional family have a negative effect. There is weak support for a positive relationship between state policies facilitating the dual-earner family and working hours of employed mothers. In addition, most of the sources of support appear to be complementary. Supportive family role models and supportive workplace arrangements have a reinforcing relationship, as do publicly funded child care and supportive workplace arrangements.

Irreconcilable differences? Ethnic intermarriage and divorce in the Netherlands, 1995-2008.

This study uses population data of the Netherlands (municipality registers) between 1995 and 2008 to describe and explain the occurrence of divorce among recently newlywed interethnic and mono-ethnic couples (N=116,745). In line with homogamy theory, divorce risks are higher for interethnic couples, in particular if the spouses were born and raised in countries that are culturally distant from each other. In addition, the effect of cultural distance is smaller for second generation immigrants than for first generation immigrants. There is no evidence for a higher risk of divorce among Black-White marriages. In line with convergence theory, results show that the higher the divorce propensity in the wife's origin country, the higher the divorce risk of a couple is.

Acquisition of cross-ethnic friends by recent immigrants in Canada: a longitudinal approach.

This paper examines the development of inter-ethnic friendships between immigrants and Canadians. It uses longitudinal data from three waves of the Canadian LSIC survey, in which newly arrived immigrants were followed during the first 4 years of settlement. It is found that pre-migration characteristics play an important role in the development of inter-ethnic friendships: immigrants who arrive at a younger age and for economic reasons, as well as those who are highly educated and have a cross-ethnic partner at the moment of arrival, establish more inter-ethnic friendships over time. In addition, post-migration characteristics affect the formation of inter-ethnic friendships. Such friendships are more common among immigrants who embrace Canadian traditions and acquire the host-country language, as well as among those who work in international settings and inhabit ethnically mixed neighborhoods. The effects of pre-migration characteristics are partially mediated by post-migration characteristics. Our findings point out that economic, cultural, and spatial integration are all conducive to inter-ethnic friendships.

Two-wave longitudinal findings from the Berlin aging study: introduction to a collection of articles.

We provide background information for a collection of articles that describe two-wave longitudinal findings derived from the first intensive follow-up of participants of the Berlin Aging Study (BASE). Multidisciplinary data were collected during 1995-1996 from 206 survivors approximately 4 years after baseline assessment (1990-1993). The strengths of the initial BASE design, in terms of a focus on very old age, multidisciplinary intensive assessment, and an examination of selectivity issues, were maintained in this longitudinal extension of the study.

Social participation in very old age: cross-sectional and longitudinal findings from BASE. Berlin Aging Study.

Social participation, defined as socially oriented sharing of individual resources, is often regarded as an important criterion of quality of life in old age. We distinguished three types of participation with respect to content, context, and resources required to participate: collective, productive, and political participation. Data from the multidisciplinary Berlin Aging Study were used to describe social participation of a very old population and to examine individual differences and changes over time. Analyses showed that social participation is cumulative. Individuals who engaged in political activities also took part in the other two types, and those who engaged in productive activities also participated in collective activities. Although many persons changed their social participation over the 4-year period, the cumulative pattern within the population remained unchanged. Educational and occupational resources were positively related to the intensity of social participation in old age, but changes in social participation could be better explained by age and health.