Total Family Impact on Status Attainment - Sources of Sibling (Dis)similarity

1. Total Family Impact on Status Attainment - Sources of Sibling (Dis)similarity Social Stratification Research Conference, Utrecht September 10, 2010 Antonie Knigge, Ineke Maas, Marco van Leeuwen

2. Background • Towards Open Societies? • Occupational status father as indicator for family impact • Underestimates the true influence of the family • Genes, socialization, financial resources, social capital, etc. • Problem: how to measure total family impact? • Impossible to measure all aspects • Traditional measures explain about 60% of total family impact • Solution: sibling models • the more similar siblings in status compared to unrelated persons, the larger total impact of the family background • Intra-class correlation (ICC) as measure

3. Background (2) • Aim: Examine whether sibling models are a valid tool for assessing (trends in) the total family impact on status attainment • Implicit Assumption: siblings benefit equally from the resources of their parents • Hunch: not always realistic • Example: equal vs unequal inheritance

4. Inheritance practices in 19th/early 20th century the Netherlands Partible & Equal Impartible & Equal Impartible & Unequal

5. Research Question • Does the extent to which siblings benefit differently from the resources of their parents form part of the explanation of trends in siblings’ status similarity for different regions in the Netherlands from 1842 to 1922?

6. Theory • We formulate conditions under which we expect siblings to benefit systematically different from the resources of their parents • Example Hypothesis: • H5. Siblings with parents who are land-owning farmers will be less similar in their attained status in communities with an unequal inheritance system than in communities with an equal inheritance system

7. Data: Genlias • Information from around 600.000 Dutch marriage acts • covering 5 of 11 provinces during the 1842-1922 period • Only look at grooms • Information on Son + Father • occupation, place & year of birth, place & year of marriage • Marriage act groom linked to marriage act parents • We know the married siblings of a groom • Complemented with other historical sources • Dutch Bur. Statistics, archives, etc.

8. P1 P2 T1 P3 T2 T3 Plaats & Tijd Siblings Siblings F1 F1 F2 F2 F3 F3 Families Families Strategy: Multilevel sibling models • Standard multilevel sibling model: siblings nested in families • Grooms also share a context • Add cross-classified levels for time and place • Auto-correlative structure for time and place

9. Standard model

10. Standard Model + Extension 1

11. Strategy: Extension 2 • Standard multilevel sibling models: variance components of each level are homogeneous • According to hypotheses, we expect them to be heterogeneous • Siblings less similar in unequal than siblings in equal inheritance farming families • Explicitly model the variance components at sibling and family level

12. Standard model

13. Standard model + Extension 2

14. Results • Not succeeded in both extensions at the same time • First: Extension 1 • Second: Extension 2 • Compare results both • Results not so important • More important: what to compare?

15. Cross-classified Multilevel Models for farming and non-farming background and different inheritance practices

16. 2-level Multilevel Model: heteroskedastic variances for farming background and inheritance practice

17. 2 approaches compared

18. Conclusion & Discussion It seems promising to model variance components to be heterogeneous Sources of heteroskedasticity not always clear Results sometimes not in line with hypotheses Issues to explore: Deepen out historical context Disentangle openness from other sources of (dis)similarity What is the right measure: ICC or something else? Non-random missings