Major studies of recruitment to higher education find the association with class to be stable over time, and on this basis conclude that egalitarian reforms have been ineffective. In contrast, measures of inequality for the same data show the distribution of attractive positions to have evened out considerably. The difference in results is explained by how the two sets of measures are affected by changes in the marginals of the class-education table, in particular the increased provision of higher education. It is argued that measures of inequality are more relevant for the question of the effectiveness of reform than measures of association, whether linear or loglinear.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/4201050

Mathematics and politics

Class inequality and egalitarian reform

This study examines the social factors related to use of the death penalty. In Study 1, the number of executions in each of the 50 states of the United States since 1976 was predicted from: (1) degree of social hierarchy, (2) Old Confederacy status, (3) political conservatism, (4) degree of violent crime, (5) income, (6) population size, (7) population density, (8) degree of education, (9) proportion of population which is white, and (10) proportion of whites murdered. Social hierarchy and conservatism were consistently and significantly related to use of executions. Study 2 predicted execution use in 147 countries from: (1) degree of social hierarchy, (2) number of murders, (3) size of government, (4) area, (5) education, (6) gross national product, and (7) population size. The degree of social hierarchy and number of murders were significantly related to execution use. While some of these results were predicted by the symbolic motives model or the deterrence model, it is argued that social dominance theory offers a more comprehensive explanation of the results as a whole.

Social Hierarchy and the Death Penalty: A Social Dominance Perspective

Generalized quantile processes based on multivariate depth function, with applications in nonparametric multivariate analysis

When studying party system change over time, it is tempting to use as indicators one or several of the existing measures of fractionalization and concentration. If these measures are used to study change, they will often be misleading because of their inability to discriminate among even very different diachronic patterns. Seven indicators are tested on a hypothetical set of data, and all of them fail to reflect typical patterns of change. Thus if students of party systems want to study the general phenomenon of party system stability or change, they should preferably use other types of measures. An indicator of aggregate volatility is shown to satisfy the requirements of a good indicator of party system change.

On Measuring Party System Change: A Methodological Critique and a Suggestion

We examined status effects in face-to-face and computer-mediated three-person groups. Our expectation that low status members in computer-mediated group discussions would participate more equally, and have more influence over decisions, than their counterparts in face-to-face groups was not confirmed. The results suggest that knowledge of status differences and labels were used to form cognitive impressions of other group members. It seems that when group members are aware of the status characteristics of the group, social cues were magnified rather than reduced. Implications of these findings for mixed status cooperative work groups and for the design of computer communication systems are discussed.

Mathematics and politics

Citations

Class inequality and egalitarian reform

Social Hierarchy and the Death Penalty: A Social Dominance Perspective

Generalized quantile processes based on multivariate depth function, with applications in nonparametric multivariate analysis

On Measuring Party System Change: A Methodological Critique and a Suggestion

Overcoming social awareness in computer-supported groups

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