TY - JOUR
T1 - Social mobility and the educational choices of Asian Americans
AU - Xie, Yu
AU - Goyette, Kimberly
N1 - Funding Information:
An earlier version of the paper was presented at the 1998 Meeting of the International Sociological Association Research Committee 28 on Stratification, Taipei, Taiwan (January). This research was supported by a research grant from the William T. Grant Foundation and a Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation to Yu Xie and an NICHD traineeship to Kimberly Goyette. The authors are grateful to Pamela Bennett, Freda Lynn, and Zhen Zeng for comments and research assistance.
PY - 2003/9
Y1 - 2003/9
N2 - In this paper, we propose a synthetic framework, "strategic adaptation," for understanding the social mobility process of Asian Americans. We argue that Asian Americans consciously choose occupations where they can effectively cope with potential discrimination and other disadvantages by achieving marketable credentials. Our empirical analyses are primarily based on data from the 1988-1994 National Educational Longitudinal Survey. There are four main findings from our study. First, Asian American youth tend to choose occupations with a high representation of Asian workers and high average earnings/education, relative to whites, even after controlling for socioeconomic background and academic performance. Second, Asians are more likely than whites to expect to enter college and to major in fields that have high financial payoffs. Third, a large fraction of this racial gap is attributable to occupational expectation. Finally, Asians are more likely than are whites to actually enroll in college and to pursue high-earning majors, and these racial differences are attributable to both educational expectation and occupational expectation.
AB - In this paper, we propose a synthetic framework, "strategic adaptation," for understanding the social mobility process of Asian Americans. We argue that Asian Americans consciously choose occupations where they can effectively cope with potential discrimination and other disadvantages by achieving marketable credentials. Our empirical analyses are primarily based on data from the 1988-1994 National Educational Longitudinal Survey. There are four main findings from our study. First, Asian American youth tend to choose occupations with a high representation of Asian workers and high average earnings/education, relative to whites, even after controlling for socioeconomic background and academic performance. Second, Asians are more likely than whites to expect to enter college and to major in fields that have high financial payoffs. Third, a large fraction of this racial gap is attributable to occupational expectation. Finally, Asians are more likely than are whites to actually enroll in college and to pursue high-earning majors, and these racial differences are attributable to both educational expectation and occupational expectation.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0041852655&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=0041852655&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/S0049-089X(03)00018-8
DO - 10.1016/S0049-089X(03)00018-8
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0041852655
SN - 0049-089X
VL - 32
SP - 467
EP - 498
JO - Social Science Research
JF - Social Science Research
IS - 3
ER -