{"title":"Origin, destination, or mobility? A systematic review of studies using diagonal reference models","authors":"Songyun Shi , Alexi Gugushvili","doi":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101047","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101047","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This systematic review examines 76 peer-reviewed studies that use Diagonal Reference Models (DRM) to assess the consequences of social mobility across three main thematic areas: health, well-being, and fertility (57 % of studies); political preferences (35 %); and cultural tastes (8 %). By analyzing these areas, the review identifies key theoretical frameworks, focusing on social position effects and mobility effects, and evaluates their alignment with empirical findings. For position effects, evidence suggests that destination status often outweighs origin status in shaping individual outcomes. For mobility effects, 58 % of studies either report non-significant results or do not explicitly examine mobility effects. Among the significant findings, the effects of mobility remain mixed and context-dependent. However, upward mobility generally benefits health and well-being, whereas downward mobility tends to have a detrimental effect. Recent studies have introduced methodological innovations such as mediation and counterfactual analyses. Still, key challenges remain. Subgroup analyses by gender and race/ethnicity are rare, findings are not always reported in a comparable way, and contextual factors are often missing. The review concludes that while DRM has helped clarify the role of social mobility in shaping individual outcomes, the field would benefit from greater transparency, more consistent reporting, and stronger attention to structural and demographic variation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47384,"journal":{"name":"Research in Social Stratification and Mobility","volume":"97 ","pages":"Article 101047"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143859897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Equal opportunity policy and the reverse gender gap in academic achievement: Evidence from a quasi-experiment in Hong Kong","authors":"Duoduo Xu , Xiaogang Wu","doi":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101048","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101048","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>What happens when education systems remove gender barriers? We examine this question through an educational reform in Hong Kong, where a gender quota system in secondary school allocation was replaced by a merit-based one. Using TIMSS data with a quasi-experimental design, we find the reform reversed male advantages in mathematics and science by reshaping school access—girls secured more seats in higher-quality schools while boys became overrepresented in lower-quality schools. These results reveal how gender quotas had artificially constrained girls’ academic potential. More importantly, they demonstrate that equal opportunity policies do not merely level the playing field— they unleash pre-existing female advantages that ultimately reverse traditional achievement gaps.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47384,"journal":{"name":"Research in Social Stratification and Mobility","volume":"97 ","pages":"Article 101048"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143902407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Trends in couples’ educational pairings and marital dissolution: Evidence from South Korea","authors":"Sangsoo Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101041","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101041","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates how heterosexual married couples’ educational pairings – where the wife is more, less, or equally educated compared to her husband – relate to divorce risk and how these patterns have changed over time. While a growing body of research has documented these trends in Western societies, it remains uncertain whether similar patterns exist in non-Western contexts with more traditional gender norms. In addition, little research has differentiated between marriages where both spouses have high levels of education and those where both have low levels of education, as both types of marriages have been classified as educational homogamy. To address these gaps, this study analyzes marriage and divorce registration data to examine changes in couples’ educational pairings and marital dissolution in South Korea between the 1991 and 2018 marriage cohorts. The findings reveal that although female hypogamy used to be associated with a higher divorce risk than hypergamy, this gap has been narrowing and is nearly closed among those married in the 2010s. Moreover, the gap in divorce risk between college-educated and non-college-educated homogamous couples has been widening.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47384,"journal":{"name":"Research in Social Stratification and Mobility","volume":"97 ","pages":"Article 101041"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143885941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What happens to bright 5-year-olds from poor backgrounds? Longitudinal evidence from the Millennium Cohort Study","authors":"John Jerrim, Maria Palma Carvajal","doi":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101038","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101038","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>High-achieving children from low-income families have perhaps the best opportunity to break through the glass ceiling and achieve upwards social mobility. Yet there have been relatively few studies investigating how key outcomes for this group develop throughout childhood, and how this compares to their equally able but more socio-economically advantaged peers. This paper draws upon Millenium Cohort Study data from the UK to provide new evidence on this issue. We find that the cognitive skills of bright 5-year-olds from low-income families keep pace with those of children from high-income families through to the end of primary school. However, the transition into secondary is a critical period, with high-achieving children from poor families experiencing a particularly sharp relative decline in their attitudes towards school, behaviour, mental health and academic achievement between age 11 and 14. The failure to fully capitalise on the early potential of this group is likely to be a key reason why the UK is failing to become a more socially fluid society.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47384,"journal":{"name":"Research in Social Stratification and Mobility","volume":"97 ","pages":"Article 101038"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143621163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stability and change in the academic qualifications of recent men and women college entrants","authors":"Natasha Quadlin , Tom VanHeuvelen","doi":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101043","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101043","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In the span of only a few generations, women have made great strides in higher education, and now far outpace men in college enrollment and completion. Especially given that girls tend to have higher achievement across levels of education, some scholars and commentators have begun to raise questions about which men and women, in terms of academic qualifications, attend colleges in the U.S.—particularly elite colleges that are associated with the greatest economic and social returns. We assess these questions using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS-02) and the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS-09), two nationally representative datasets collected during this recent era of heightened college competitiveness. We find that men and women had roughly equal chances of attending top colleges given equal academic qualifications. Importantly, though, we observe large changes at the bottom of the academic hierarchy, with less-prepared men increasingly opting into two-year colleges and attending higher education at similar rates as comparably qualified women. Thus, while much commentary tends to focus on elite institutions, recent changes at non-elite institutions are much more consequential for broader educational trends. Implications for research on gender and educational inequality are discussed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47384,"journal":{"name":"Research in Social Stratification and Mobility","volume":"97 ","pages":"Article 101043"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143807360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exploring pathways: How friends' anti-academic behavior contributes to the gender gap in language and math grades","authors":"Margriet van Hek","doi":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101042","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101042","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates the role of friends in the establishment of the gender gap in grades in secondary education. Specifically, it explores to what extent and through what pathways the anti-academic behavior of friends in school affects the gender gap in grades for the national language and math. Hypotheses are tested with two waves of the CILS4EU data that contain information about students and their schools in Sweden, the Netherlands, England and Germany (n = 10,164). Multilevel mediation models show that girls receive considerably higher grades than boys for the national language and that boys have a small advantage in math. Gender gaps in grades are affected by friends’ anti-academic behavior. Boys’ friends more often engage in anti-academic behavior, and this directly negatively impacts grades, but also works indirectly as it stimulates students’ own anti-academic behavior which in turn is detrimental to grades.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47384,"journal":{"name":"Research in Social Stratification and Mobility","volume":"97 ","pages":"Article 101042"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143833968","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Class, subjective status, and turnout in Europe","authors":"Giacomo Melli","doi":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101039","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101039","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Inspired by Weber’s distinction between class and status, the paper explores the independent and joint role of social class and subjective social status in shaping electoral participation in contemporary European democracies. While social class has long been established as a predictor of political behaviour, less attention has been paid to the influence of subjective status, an individual’s self-assessed position within the social hierarchy. Drawing on nineteen waves of data from the International Social Survey Program from 2002 to 2021 across twenty-five European countries, this paper examines how social class and subjective status independently and jointly influence electoral participation. The findings indicate that while social class remains a significant determinant of electoral participation, subjective status offers further insight. Individuals with higher subjective status are more likely to vote, regardless of their social class. Moreover, within social classes, particularly the working class, participation rates are stratified by subjective status, with a notable gap between individuals with high and low subjective status. By employing Linear Probability Models with Country-Year Fixed Effects, the study accounts for cross-national differences and provides a robust analysis of electoral participation in Europe. These results contribute to a deeper understanding of political inequality, suggesting that subjective aspects of social stratification should be considered alongside traditional class-based analyses to fully grasp the factors influencing political participation in European democracies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47384,"journal":{"name":"Research in Social Stratification and Mobility","volume":"97 ","pages":"Article 101039"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143705379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Educational sorting in unions and subjective well-being in Europe: Gender differences and contextual variations","authors":"Yanwen Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101020","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101020","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines the associations between educational sorting—the intra-couple difference in education—and subjective well-being of heterosexual partners in Europe, independent of each partner’s education status. It extends the literature by exploring whether and how these associations vary across societies and normative climates. A sample of 180,733 respondents in marriage or cohabitation from 29 countries was selected from Rounds 1–10 (2002–2020) of the European Social Survey and analyzed using the Diagonal Mobility Models. Pooled analyses show that net of status effects, hypergamy (women partnering with more educated men) was associated with lower well-being for both genders, and men were more satisfied with life in hypogamous relationships (partnering with more educated women). These patterns varied across societies, illustrated, for instance, by a hypergamy advantage among men in Southern Europe and women in the Baltic states. Notably, women’s well-being disadvantage in hypergamy was exacerbated in contexts where such partnerships were less normative. These findings provide unique insights into the diverse well-being outcomes of assortative mating between genders and across societies, shaped, in part, by societal norms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47384,"journal":{"name":"Research in Social Stratification and Mobility","volume":"96 ","pages":"Article 101020"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143130706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Global value chains and racial inequality in the US labor market, 1979–2017","authors":"Manjing Gao , Matthew C. Mahutga , Ronald Kwon","doi":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101023","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101023","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We examine how global value chains (GVCs) impact “between” and “within-race” US labor market inequalities. GVCs change the returns to occupations and human capital categories (economic effects), as well as the share of the population within these categories (compositional effects). US racism should interact with GVCs to produce racially disparate GVC effects. We employ variance function regression to examine between and within-race inequality simultaneously, and innovate on classical decompositions to quantify how much of the change in each can be attributed to racially disparate effects of GVCs. GVCs increase inequality within <em>and</em> between races. These effects are largest <em>within races</em>, where almost no racial differences are observed. <em>Between races</em>, racially disparate GVC effects were often inconsistent with contemporary theories of US racial inequality. Economic effects were always most beneficial for Asian Americans, and frequently more beneficial for African Americans and Latino/a workers than for Whites. Compositional effects were nearly always most beneficial for Asian Americans, and reduced between-race inequality in aggregate. Overall, then, GVCs increased between-race inequality because large occupational and skill income gaps persisted between races, because Asian American gains are net inequality increasing, and because absolute and/or relative (to White) gains by African American and Latino/a workers in some categories were too small to offset the absolute and/or relative gains of Asian Americans and Whites in others.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47384,"journal":{"name":"Research in Social Stratification and Mobility","volume":"96 ","pages":"Article 101023"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143419639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dustin Avent-Holt , Tali Kristal , Ludmila Garmash
{"title":"Ethnic conflict and workplace inequality: Hiring Arabs during conflict escalation in Israel, 1997–2015","authors":"Dustin Avent-Holt , Tali Kristal , Ludmila Garmash","doi":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101021","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101021","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We use the case of Israel to analyze the relationship between ethnonationalist conflict and workplace inequalities, arguing that escalation of ethnic conflict in the political environment induces social closure behaviors within organizations geographically more proximate to the conflict. Combining data from Israeli population registers and the Global Terrorism Database we find that an increase in conflict, measured by non-state political violence occurring within the state of Israel, leads to a decrease in the likelihood of nearby organizations hiring Arab men and women. Importantly, these effects are typically stronger for women and are diminished in organizations that either depend on Arab labor or have a higher density of Arab workers at the top of the organization. Demonstrating that deepening ethnonationalist political conflicts shape workplace inequalities, this paper extends both the theory of racialized organizations and Relational Inequality Theory.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47384,"journal":{"name":"Research in Social Stratification and Mobility","volume":"96 ","pages":"Article 101021"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143378391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}