Wout Ultee

Bio: Wout Ultee is an academic researcher from Radboud University Nijmegen. The author has contributed to research in topics: Occupational prestige & Unemployment. The author has an hindex of 23, co-authored 134 publications receiving 2424 citations. Previous affiliations of Wout Ultee include University of Amsterdam & Utrecht University.

Levensloop en kerkverlating: Een nieuwe en overkoepelende verklaring voor enkele empirische regelmatigheden.

Abstract: Research shows that especially the young and better-educated are more likely to leave the church. The process of apostasy also differs substantially between denominations. Using a life history perspective we examine the social mechanisms that might explain these three empirical regularities. Using a general theory, incorporating modernization and integration theory, we predict that people leave the church either for cognitive, social or moral reasons and that these effects interact. We test these hypotheses with the 1998 Family Survey of the Dutch Population. The results show that social integration indicators explain a large part of the denominational differences. Denominational differences no longer exist, whereas in the past Catholics and liberal Protestants were more likely to leave their church compared to orthodox Protestants. The results show furthermore that being raised in a financially deprived environment, possession of technical toys, general reading and left-wing preferences of the parents increase the risk of leaving the church in later life. Social context effects suggest that an increasingly educated population and having many non-religious people in one's environment, rather than being surrounded by few people of the same denomination, make it more likely for individuals to leave their church. Interaction effects show that after people have left the parental home (1) church attendance of the parents no longer decreases the risk of leaving the church; (2) Catholics have a lower chance of leaving the church than orthodox and liberal Protestants; (3) the impact of education becomes stronger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]; Copyright of Mens en Maatschappij is the property of Amsterdam University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Thuisblijven bij verkiezingen in Nederland en de Verenigde Staten

Abstract: In this article we address the question of why some people do not vote and others do. We derive our answer from existing theories on the political party that people vote for, if they vote. The likelihood that people vote depends on the norms of the social group to which they belong, and on the degree to which they are integrated in these groups. Hypotheses are tested with a pooled dataset of cross- sectional surveys from the Netherlands (Parliamentary Election Studies) and the United States (General Social Survey). We test the hypothesis that U.S. complex voter registration decreases lowly educated persons' voting chances. By investigating our hypotheses in two different countries, we accomplish a stronger test of our theory. Logistic regression analysis shows that in the United States lower educated people indeed have a lower propensity to vote than in the Netherlands. In both countries people who are lowly educated, low on income, and members of the lower social classes are less inclined to vote. For the U.S., the difference between blacks and whites disappears when education and social class are taken into account. Church attendance and membership of organizations are measures of (high) social integration, that are positively connected to voting chances. The latter reduces the income effect for the Netherlands. Furthermore, the young are more likely to be non-voters. No effect of marital status on voting chances was found. In the Netherlands, opposite religious and economic interests negatively influence the probability to vote; this so-called cross-pressure effect accounts for the social class effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]; Copyright of Mens en Maatschappij is the property of Amsterdam University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Cultuurdeelname en opleidingsverschillen in primaire relaties: De invloed van intergenerationele mobiliteit en gemengde huwelijken

Abstract: The relationship between education and cultural participation in primary relations: influences of intergenerational mobility and mixed marriages Those with a higher education visit more frequently concerts, monuments and museums. In order to predict the level of cultural participation, we consider besides the education of the respondent also the education of his/her father and partner. We assume that for individuals who are intergenerational mobile and have a mixed marriage with respect to their education. will take persons with a high education and a father and partner who have also a high education. as a positive point of reference in the process of adaptation. On basis of these predictions we answer the question what the consequences are of an increasing number of mixed marriages and more intergenerational mobility for the strength of the relationship between education and cultural participation. The ratio between the influence of one's own education, partner's education and father's education amounts to 3:2:1. The changes in the number of mixed marriages and patterns of mobility offered no explanation for the changes in the relationship between education and cultural participation between 1974 and 1983.

Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks

Abstract: Similarity breeds connection. This principle—the homophily principle—structures network ties of every type, including marriage, friendship, work, advice, support, information transfer, exchange, comembership, and other types of relationship. The result is that people's personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics. Homophily limits people's social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience. Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments, with age, religion, education, occupation, and gender following in roughly that order. Geographic propinquity, families, organizations, and isomorphic positions in social systems all create contexts in which homophilous relations form. Ties between nonsimilar individuals also dissolve at a higher rate, which sets the stage for the formation of niches (localize...

A Treatise on the Family

Abstract: A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …