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Showing papers by "Yu Xie published in 2016"


Journal ArticleDOI
Yu Xie1
TL;DR: Equality in China has been generated and maintained by structural collective mechanisms, such as regions and work units, and many Chinese people today regard inequality as an inevitable consequence of economic development.
Abstract: Drawing on past research, including my own, I set forth the following propositions: (1) inequality in China has been generated and maintained by structural collective mechanisms, such as regions and work units; (2) traditional Chinese political ideology has promoted merit-based inequality, with merit being perceived as functional in improving the collective welfare for ordinary people; and (3) many Chinese people today regard inequality as an inevitable consequence of economic development. Thus, it seems unlikely that social inequality alone would lead to political and social unrest in today’s China.

53 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is found that Asian Americans' behaviors and attitudes are less influenced by family SES than those of Whites are and that this difference helps generate Asians' premium in achievement.

53 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Empirical analyses show that higher parental education, higher family income, and fewer siblings are all associated with a higher likelihood of private tutoring and higher levels of spending on it, which is predictive of higher verbal and math performances.
Abstract: The prevalence of private tutoring is often noted in the literature on education in East Asia. Empirical evidence concerning the causes and consequences of private tutoring, however, is sparse, especially for China. In this article, we draw upon data from the 2010 China Family Panel Studies to explore whether children’s tutoring experiences are influenced by family background and whether private tutoring benefits children’s educational performance. Our empirical analyses show that higher parental education, higher family income, and fewer siblings are all associated with a higher likelihood of private tutoring and higher levels of spending on it. Furthermore, private tutoring and spending on tutoring are predictive of higher verbal and math performances, although the difference in math performance between children who received private tutoring and those who did not is statistically insignificant after controlling for family background.

44 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This study examines intermarriage across social origin and education boundaries in the United States using data from the 1968–2013 Panel Study of Income Dynamics and shows that the rules of exchange are more consistent with the notion of diminishing marginal utility than the more general theory of compensating differentials.
Abstract: Intermarriage plays a key role in stratification systems. Spousal resemblance reinforces social boundaries within and across generations, and the rules of intermarriage govern the ways that social mobility may occur. We examine intermarriage across social origin and education boundaries in the United States using data from the 1968-2013 Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Our evidence points to a pattern of status exchange-that is, persons with high education from modest backgrounds tend to marry those with lower education from more privileged backgrounds. Our study contributes to an active methodological debate by pinpointing the conditions under which the results pivot from evidence against exchange to evidence for exchange and advances theory by showing that the rules of exchange are more consistent with the notion of diminishing marginal utility than the more general theory of compensating differentials.

40 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Analysis of gender-specific fertility effects on parents' time use, income, and subjective well-being in China suggests that parents would do better if the one-child policy were abolished - i.e., if parents were allowed to have more children.
Abstract: Background Many previous empirical findings on 'motherhood penalty' and 'fatherhood premium' remain inconclusive due to potential selection biases. China's regional variation in exemptions to the one-child policy enables us to use the gender of the first child as a powerful instrumental variable (IV) in identifying the gendered fertility effects. Objective We aim to estimate the causal effects of fertility on fathers' and mothers' various outcomes in China. Methods Using the IV approach, this paper examines the gender-specific fertility effects on parents' time use, income, and subjective well-being, using data for 2010 from the China Family Panel Studies. Results Results show that while fathers spend more time at work and less time taking care of family members with more children, mothers report better subjective well-being. Moreover, fathers gain self-confidence in both their careers and the future, and mothers are happier, more satisfied with life and report better social ability. Conclusions Our findings do not directly support the gendered fertility effects on parents. However, the differential fertility effects on specific domains for mothers versus fathers are consistent with household specialisation. By interpreting this conclusion within the context of China's one-child family planning policy, our research suggests that parents would do better if the one-child policy were abolished - i.e., if parents were allowed to have more children.

38 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the impact of spatial and temporal changes in economic development on people's life satisfaction and find that temporal context matters far more than spatial context where individuals' life satisfaction is concerned.
Abstract: Social context affects people’s life satisfaction because it provides a natural reference for evaluating their own socioeconomic standing. Given their reference role, social contexts operationalized by space versus time may have very different implications. Our hypothesis is that spatial variation in economic development has little impact on life satisfaction as individuals living in different locales are unlikely to experience this variation personally, but that short-term temporal changes in economic development, on the other hand, do have an impact, as individuals in a given locale experience these changes directly. These two very different implications of spatial versus temporal social contexts are tested with an analysis of repeated survey data in 60 counties of China from 2005 to 2010. The results show that life satisfaction does not vary much with regional differences in economic development but responds positively to the local level of economic development over time. That is, the contextual effects of economic development vary greatly depending on how social context is operationalized. Temporal context matters far more than regional context where individuals’ life satisfaction is concerned.

29 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors find systematic variation by sociodemographic characteristics in thresholds used by respondents in rating their general health status, and demonstrate that the CFPS anchoring vignettes prove to be an effective survey instrument in obtaining bias-adjusted estimates of health disparities.
Abstract: This study investigates how reporting heterogeneity may bias socioeconomic and demographic disparities in self-rated general health, a widely used health indicator, and how such bias can be adjusted by using new anchoring vignettes designed in the 2012 wave of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). We find systematic variation by socio-demographic characteristics in thresholds used by respondents in rating their general health status. Such threshold shifts are often non-parallel in that the effect of a certain group characteristic on the shift is stronger at one level than another. We find that the resulting bias of measuring group differentials in self-rated health can be too substantial to be ignored. We demonstrate that the CFPS anchoring vignettes prove to be an effective survey instrument in obtaining bias-adjusted estimates of health disparities not only for the CFPS sample, but also for an independent sample from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. Effective adjustment for reporting heterogeneity may require vignette administration only to a small subsample (20-30% of the full sample). Using a single vignette can be as effective as using more in terms of anchoring, but the results are sensitive to the choice of vignette design.

27 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The “smoothing-difference PS-based method,” which enables us to uncover heterogeneity across people of different PSs in both counterfactual outcomes and treatment effects, is introduced.
Abstract: Since the seminal introduction of the propensity score by Rosenbaum and Rubin, propensity-score-based (PS-based) methods have been widely used for drawing causal inferences in the behavioral and social sciences. However, the propensity score approach depends on the ignorability assumption: there are no unobserved confounders once observed covariates are taken into account. For situations where this assumption may be violated, Heckman and his associates have recently developed a novel approach based on marginal treatment effects (MTE). In this paper, we (1) explicate consequences for PS-based methods when aspects of the ignorability assumption are violated; (2) compare PS-based methods and MTE-based methods by making a close examination of their identification assumptions and estimation performances; (3) apply these two approaches in estimating the economic return to college using data from NLSY 1979 and discuss their discrepancies in results. When there is a sorting gain but no systematic baseline difference between treated and untreated units given observed covariates, PS-based methods can identify the treatment effect of the treated (TT). The MTE approach performs best when there is a valid and strong instrumental variable (IV). In addition, this paper introduces the “smoothing-difference PS-based method,” which enables us to uncover heterogeneity across people of different propensity scores in both counterfactual outcomes and treatment effects.

24 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Analysis of the roles of education and occupation in shaping trends in income inequality among college-educated workers in the United States, drawing data from two sources: the 1960–2000 U.S. Censuses and the 2006–2008 three-year American Community Survey, yields four findings.
Abstract: In this chapter, we present analyses of the roles of education and occupation in shaping trends in income inequality among college-educated workers in the U.S., drawing data from two sources: (1) the 1960-2000 U.S. Censuses and (2) the 2006-2008 three-year American Community Survey. We also examine in detail historical trends in between-occupation and within-occupation income inequality for a small set of high-status professionals, with focused attention on the economic wellbeing of scientists. Our research yields four findings. First, education premiums have increased. Second, both between-occupation and within-occupation inequality increased at about the same rates for college graduates, so that the portion of inequality attributable to occupational differences remained constant. Third, scientists have lost ground relative to other similarly educated professionals. Fourth, trends in within-occupation inequality vary by occupation and education, making any sweeping summary on the roles of education and occupation in the overall increase in income inequality difficult.

23 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
Chunni Zhang1, Yu Xie1
TL;DR: It is found that migrants with a high propensity to work in an enclave benefit more from enclave participation than those with a low propensity, and this effect is smaller than that resulting from a naïve comparison.
Abstract: Among rural-to-urban migrants, migrant workers from the same origins tend to concentrate in the same workplaces. When this concentration in a workplace is sufficiently dense, we may consider it a native-place enclave. According to extensive literature on US immigrants, enclave participation may improve the economic well-being of immigrants. This study borrows the same reasoning to evaluate whether or not working in a native-place enclave affects earnings of migrant workers in urban China. We pay particular attention to heterogeneity, not only in how migrants who work in an enclave may differ from those who choose to work in the open economy, but also in varying earnings returns to enclave participation across different groups of migrant workers. Using data from a 2010 survey of migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta, we match enclave workers and non-enclave workers with the same propensity to work in an enclave and then compare their earnings differences. We find a positive a...

17 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: How developmental idealism has been widely disseminated within China and has had enormous effects on public policy and programs, on social institutions, and on the lives of individuals and their families is discussed.
Abstract: This paper examines the intersection of developmental idealism with China. It discusses how developmental idealism has been widely disseminated within China and has had enormous effects on public p...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Using cross-sectional survey data from Argentina, China, and Egypt, the factor structure underlying observed measures for aspects of developmental idealism is explored and the reliability of different models is estimated.
Abstract: This paper investigates the measurement of developmental idealism. Developmental idealism is a set of beliefs and values stating that modern societies and families are better than traditional ones, that modern families facilitate modern societies, and that modern societies foster modern families. Prior research has shown that developmental idealism is widespread globally but has provided little evidence about whether beliefs concerning developmental idealism can be measured reliably at the individual level. It also has provided little information about the dimensionality and psychometric properties of measures of developmental idealism. Using cross-sectional survey data from Argentina, China, and Egypt, we explore and test the factor structure underlying observed measures for aspects of developmental idealism and estimate the reliability of different models. Theory and data suggest that developmental idealism consists of multiple dimensions, and when family-related items are measuring similar underlying constructs, the measurement reliabilities are high. These results provide evidence that the dimensions of developmental idealism can be measured with a high degree of reliability.