Suchergebnisse

THE QUESTION OF WHETHER ECONOMIC GROWTH HAS PROMOTED GREATER EQUALITY BETWEEN AND WITHIN ETHNIC GROUPS IS EXPLORED.

Has the expansion of secondary and higher education during the period from 1950 to 1970 restructured the ethnic division of labor? This seven-nation cross-cultural study examines the extent to which changes in education have transformed the ethnic occupational structure in reform-oriented societies. The results show that in five out of the seven countries, the ethnic division of labor became less hierarchically specialized. In the remaining two countries, the New Zealand Maoris have become increasingly overrepresented in secondary jobs during the 1970s, and South African Coloureds, Asians, and Africans have not regained their pre-apartheid occupational position. These subsequent changes in occupational segregation across 19 pairwise comparisons are, surprisingly, not due to the initial spread of education. This finding lends support to the radical thesis that education in societies that have implemented different types of social reforms have had little impact on the likely trajectories of the ethnic division of labor.

This article examines preferential treatment strategies in Malaysia and Sri Lanka that are designed to restructure the cultural division of labor. National culture is redefined and labor-market closure mechanisms are altered in order to elevate the position of the Sinhalese and Malays who are politically, but not economically, dominant. The results show that cultural preferential systems can restructure employment practices, and help those groups that have some economic and political resources to bargain with. The Sri Lankan Tamils and Malaysian Indians had few economic or political resources and, consequently, became the losers in the three-way competition.

The article examines preferential treatment strategies in Malaysia and Sri Lanka that are designed to restructure the cultural division of labor. National culture is redefined and labor-market closure mechanisms are altered in order to elevate the position of the Sinhalese and Malays who are politically, but not economically, dominant. The results show that cultural preferential systems can restructure employment practices, and help those groups that have some economic and political resources to bargain with. The Sri Lankan Tamils and Malaysian Indians had few economic or political resources and, consequently, became the losers in the three-way competition. (Internat. Political Science Assoc.)

This article examines the thesis that a reduction in occupational and educational differentials across cross-cutting lines of differentiation, and a more representative government, will have a redistributive effect on ethnic income distribution. This thesis emerges out of the liberal theory of development which implicitly assumes that equalizing opportunity structures across cultural divisions, and increasing political participation, will eventually affect income disparities between groups. The extent to which ethnic income redistribution is a function of educational reform and a broader political participation is a question that has not been systematically examined cross-culturally. In fact, we know very little about the relative progress of ethnic groups in different parts of the world.

This article develops an alternative measure for use in comparing two income distributions. The measure builds on the argument that under certain conditions inequality and dissimilarity are not the same thing, and this difference can be used to develop a measure of "crossover." As far as we know, no analyst has developed a statistical measure that can determine the size of crossover (overlap) between two cumulative distribution functions. The measure is then applied to racial income distribution data in the United States. The results show some of the "styles" of crossover that vary from bottom-up to top-down patterns. We argue that the overlap information generated by this measure can provide insight into who benefits by trends in intergroup convergence that is not gained when using existing intergroup inequality measures.