Conference on Social Inequality
Between September 10th and 12th, the University of Tallinn hosted a conference on social inequality. The conference was organized by the European Consortium for Sociological Research. Ksenia Tenisheva and Ekaterina Mehnetsova from SESL were among the participants of the conference.
The participants could choose between numerous sessions on inequality in the labour market and in education, gender and ethnic inequality, mobility and migration, inequality in income and health level.
Inequality in education was discussed in many different aspects. For example, some researchers were discussing the OED model (Origin-Education-Destination), which we have mentioned earlier. Others were focusing on vocational training, its perception in the eyes of children, parents and employers, as well as pay-offs on various levels regarding professional education. Valentina Di Stasio made a presentation on the perception of vocational training by the people who take this route of education. For example, she had shown that, for women, their selection of vocational training plays a less important role as a means to ensure their future entrance to the job market.
Many German sociologists have examined the effects of sorting and tracking in the school, which is very close to the research areas of our laboratory. For example, Tobias Roth from the University of Mannheim presented the results of his studies on the effect of presence or absence of binding recommendations from teachers on the type of high school suitable for a child. The recent changes in educational policy in the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia have created a kind of natural experiment for sociologists. Roth arrived at an unexpected conclusion: the lack of binding recommendations (often based on the assessment of the academic success of students) is increasing the level of inequality in the selection of their educational track.
The researchers from Mannheim have also presented an interesting study, which was aimed at finding out the mechanisms behind the often-observed correlation between the academic success of children and the number of books in their home. They compared the relationship between the number of book shelves at home and the economic resources of the family, and arrived at the conclusion that, more often than not, books indicated a higher level of culture. However, the exact effect of the amount of books on the academic success of children is yet unclear.
Aigul Aliyeva from the Institute of Social and Economic Research in Luxembourg gave a presentation on the experimental method used in her research: due to the absence of international longitudinal data, she had created quasi-panel data based on popular international databases, like PISA, TIMMS and PIRLS, from different years. Her method enables the creation of quasi-panel data even within one country. She had used them to compare the chances of ethnic majorities and ethnic minorities on receiving education through the academic route in high school.
In addition, the conference included two keynote presentations. Francesco C. Billari talked about the new possibilities for researchers created by the increasing digitization of modern life: more and more people leave bigger digital footprints, for example, through their usage of the Internet. He demonstrated the possible use of such data for forecasts of fertility intentions at a macro-level, based on the results of user searches in a search engine.
Klarita Gerxhani gave a short presentation on a number of experiments and studies aimed at researching formal and informal ways used by employers to find new employees. These experiments have confirmed that informal channels of recruitment (for example, through business partners) are more beneficial to both the employer and the employee.
There were many interesting presentations at the conference, including those that involved different approaches used in the research. Researchers were sharing their ideas; it was really good to be immersed in this atmosphere, and to see the close connections between various aspects of social inequality.
By Ekaterina Mehnetsova