duncan and duncan 1968

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Minorities and the Process of StratificationAuthor(s): Beverly Duncan and Otis Dudley DuncanSource: American Sociological Review, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Jun., 1968), pp. 356-364Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2091911 .Accessed: 18/05/2011 16:43

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MINORITIES AND THE PROCESS OF STRATIFICATION *

BEVERLY DUNCAN AND OTIS DUDLEY DUNCAN

University of Michigan

Data concerning educational and occupational achievement, and the influence thereon ofsocial and national origin, are presented for a 1962 sample of native American non-Negromales, ages 25-64, whose family heads had been pursuing a nonfarm occupation when therespondent was 16. There are substantial differences among national-origin groups with respectto both educational and occupational achievement. Allowance for inter-group differences insocial origin, by partial regression techniques, reduces the range of difference with respect toeducational achievement, and with respect to occupational achievement, by about one-third.The national-origin classification is much less important as an explanation of the varianceamong respondents with respect to their education and occupation than with respect to theeducation and occupation of their family heads. In this sense a melting-pot phenomenonobtains in America. Once equated with respect to starting point in the

social structure andeducational attainment, the occupational achievement of one national-origin group differs littlefrom that of another.

The experience of non-Negro minorities, as revealed by these data, would argue against theexistence of pervasive discrimination on purely ethnic grounds. The notion of equal opportu-nity irrespective of national origin is a near reality, the outstanding exceptions being the over-achievement of Russian-Americans and the under-achievement of Latin-Americans. This find-ing contrasts sharply with the evidence, based on the same mode of analysis, of discriminationagainst the American Negro.

Tis commonly held that ethnic and racialminorities differ with respect to the

rapidity of assimilation into the ma-jority socioeconomic system or in the rateof upward social mobility between genera-tions. Indeed, the relative positions of theseveral minorities with respect to verticalmobility often are assumed to be sufficientlywell documented that investigations of thecorrelates or causes of mobility differentialscan proceed without re-establishing the mag-nitude of the differentials themselves. In ex-ploring the consequences for social mobilityof inter-group differences in psychologicaland cultural orientations toward achieve-ment, for example, Rosen (1959) took asgiven the low vertical mobility of Negroes,the greater vertical mobility of SouthernItalians and French-Canadians, and the stillgreater vertical mobility of the Jewish andGreek minorities. For him the cause of mo-bility differentials rather than the existenceof such differentials was problematic. Paral-

lelism between the assumed ranking of groupswith respect to vertical mobility and their

ranking with respect to the AchievementSyndrome was taken to imply that differ-ences among minorities in the achievementorientation of their members were reflectedin their disparate rates of vertical mobility.

At the same time that this linkage betweenachievement orientation and vertical mobil-ity was discussed in the literature, Nam(1959) reported a set of findings about dif-ferences in socioeconomic status betweenimmigrant and second-generation Americansin each of ten national-origin groups. Themean of the status scores for the second-generation exceeded the mean status scorefor the immigrant groups when inter-groupdifferences in age and rural-urban residencehad been controlled statistically. The na-tional-origin groups for which the differencein score between generations fell closest tothe mean difference were the Czechs, theItalians, and the Russians. If the last group

can serve as a surrogate for the Jewishminority and if the experience of SouthernItalians is accurately represented by the ex-perience of all Italians, Nam's findings implythat both Jews and Southern Italians were

average minorities with respect to rate ofvertical mobility. Differences between gen-

* The research reported herein was carried outunder Contract No. OE-5-85-072 with the U.S.Office of Education, as a part of Project No. 5-0074(EO-191), Socioeconomic Background and Occu-pational Achievement: Extensions of a Basic Model.Susan Bittner and Ellen Shantz provided computa-tional assistance.

356


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MINORITIES AND STRATIFICATION 357

erations for the other minority groupsstudied by Rosen were not assessed by Nam,but the possibility that Rosen's assumedranking of minorities with respect to verticalmobility was erroneous must be entertained.If so, the consequences of ethnic variationin achievement orientation for social mobil-ity become ambiguous.

Recently Taeuber and Taeuber (1968)have pointed out some pitfalls in inferringrates of vertical mobility for national-origingroups from comparisons of the socioeco-nomic status of immigrant and second-gen-eration Americans. Specifically, they call at-tention to the implicit and demonstrably

false assumption that the foreign-born andsecond-generation Americans surveyed on agiven date approximate immigrants andtheir children or second-generation Amer-icans and their parents. It is, however, onprecisely such comparisons, bolstered by anoccasional intensive study for a select sub-population, that generalizations about thesocial promotion of American minorities rest.

A body of data now exists which permitssomewhat tighter measurement of the educa-tional and occupational achievements of na-tive Americans and the influence thereon ofsocial origin and national origin.

THE DATA ON ACHIEVEMENT AND ORIGIN

Each civilian noninstitutional male be-tween the ages of 20 and 64 who was in-cluded in the March, 1962, Current Popula-tion Survey conducted by the United StatesBureau of the Census was asked to com-plete a supplementary questionnaire, Oc-cupational Changes in a Generation, whichdealt with his social background. A report onthe survey has been published (Blau andDuncan, 1967), and the details are not re-capitulated here.

The subset of data presently under scru-tiny is restricted to native non-Negro maleswho were between the ages of 25 and 64in 1962 and whose family heads had beenpursuing a nonfarm occupation when therespondent was 16 years old. The sevenitems of information which enter the anal-ysis are identified in Table 1. Most crucialare the indicators of origin and achievement.Social origin is indexed by two variables:school years completed by the head of thefamily in which the respondent was living at

age 16; and the socioeconomic status scoreof the job then held by the family head. Na-tional origin appears as a 13-fold classifica-tion based on the country of birth of thefathers of native white males, the region ofbirth of the white males of native parentage,and a residual category for the native malesof the minor nonwhite races. Achievementis indexed by the school years completed bythe respondent and by the socioeconomicstatus score of the job he held, or had mostrecently held, at the time of the survey.

The quality of the survey data is thoughtto be generally good, insofar as independentchecks can be made (Duncan, 1965; Blau

and Duncan, 1967). The numbers of samplecases in several national-origin strata aresmall, however, and even a rough check onthe differences among national-origin groupscan only be carried out for one socialcharacteristic, the educational attainment ofthe respondents. A mean education score wascalculated from published tabulations of the1950 Census (Vol. IV, Pt. 3, Ch. A, Tables10 and 20) for native white males aged 25to 44, of foreign or mixed parentage, and re-siding in urban or rural-nonfarm territory.The coefficient of correlation between thesescores and the scores reported in Table 1was found to be 0.98 over nine national-ori-gin groups (the six nations separately identi-fied in the stub of Table 1, England-Wales,Norway, Sweden, and Austria equated withNorthwest Europe except Ireland and Ger-many, Mexico equated with America exceptCanada, and a residual all other ). The ed-

ucation score for nonwhites other than Ne-groes is somewhat suspect, however. Thescore reported in Table 1 resembles closelya Census-based score for Japanese andChinese, who are estimated to make uproughly half the group. It appears undulyhigh when allowance is made for the factthat the other group members are primarilyAmerican Indians, whose educational at-tainment is substantially less. (Although wehave no specific indication that this is thecase, it may be that the respondents to thesurvey and supplementary questionnaire donot proportionately represent American In-dians.)

The survey results reveal fairly substan-tial differences among national-origin groupswith respect to both educational and occupa-


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358 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

TABLE 1. MEAN SCORES AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS ON SIX SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS FOR NATIVE

CIVILIAN NON-NEGRO MALES OF NONFARM BACKGROUND, AGED 25 TO 64 IN 1962, ANDDEVIATIONS FROM THE RESPECTIVE GRAND MEANS FOR NATIONAL-ORIGIN

SUBGROUPS: UNITED STATES, 1962

Family Head'sFirst Current

Edu- Occu- Siblings, Edu- Occu- Occu- Number aNational Origin cation pation number cation pation pation (000's)

All Non-Negroes .... ..... .... 22,712Mean Score 8.63 34.06 3.85 11.69 .30.35 43.45Standard Deviation 3.66 22.72 2.94 3.30 22.10 24.58

White, Native Father,Respondent Born-

South -0.28 -0.37 0.43 -0.65 -2.32 -2.47 4,549North or West 0.85 3.23 -0.42 0.35 0.92 1.31 11,349

White, Foreign Father,Father born-USSR -1.51 2.39 -0.46 1.43 9.55 8.77 575NW Europe, exc.

IrelandandGermany 0.55 -0.12 -0.31 0.26 4.52 5.55 1,040Ireland -0.48 -5.67 0.03 0.32 4.24 1.03 413Canada 0.38 1.85 0.29 0.16 -0.53 0.89 538Germany 0.18 -1.56 0.37 -0.55 -2.37 0.05 643Europe, exc. NW, Italy,

Poland, and USSR -2.09 -8.09 0.62 -0.04 -1.41 -0.69 1,165Poland -2.91 -11.77 0.87 -0.65 -4.00 -4.80 620Italy -2.94 -10.94 0.91 -0.64 -2.28 -6.03 1,282America, exc. Canada -3.23 -11.30 1.62 -2.77 -6.67 -14.85 244

All Otherb -1.99 -3.54 0.86 -0.32 -2.95 -5.30 137Nonwhite, exc. Negrob 0.24 -1.20 0.60 -0.12 -4.79 3.12 157

a Includes men not reporting specific items; approximate sample frequencies may be obtained bydividing population frequencies, in thousands, by 2.17.

bBase is fewer than 100 sample cases.SOURCE: Unpublished tabulations from March, 1962 Current Population Survey and supplement

thereto, Occupational Changes in a Generation, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census.

tional achievement. Especially distinguishedby high achievement are the Russian-Ameri-

cans, who outrank not only the other mi-norities, but also the native-of-native ma-jority. The lowest achievement is recordedon the part of native Americans whosefathers were born in Latin America, mostoften in Mexico. It is neither of these groupswhich most closely resembles the third-gener-ation in achieved status, however, but ratherthe Irish, the Canadians, the Germans, andthe other Europeans, such as Czechs.Moreover, were a measure of vertical mobil-ity to be constructed by subtracting from themean achievement score of respondents thecorresponding mean score for their familyheads, the group of other European originwould outrank Russian-Americans with re-spect to occupational mobility; and German-Americans rather than Latin-Americans

would appear to be low achievers in the edu-cational sphere.

Perhaps a more fruitful approach is toview membership in a given national-origingroup as a predetermined variable in amodel of the process of stratification (Blauand Duncan, 1967, Ch. 5)-one which mayinfluence achievement both through its link-ages with other ascribed characteristics andby fostering an achievement syndrome orcircumscribing opportunities for achieve-ment.

ORIGINS AND EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT

From a life-cycle perspective, the earliestmeasure of achievement available in thissubset of data is the number of school yearsor grades completed by the respondent. Mea-sures on the family head's educational and


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occupational attainment are temporally priorto the achievement measure, and typically allsiblings will have been born prior to thecompletion of the respondent's schooling.These three characteristics along with mem-bership in a national-origin group are takenas antecedent to the respondent's educa-tional achievement.

Let us suppose that the process of stratifi-cation operates in an identical fashion formen in the so-called majority and in theseveral minorities, i.e., that the respectivenet effects of head's education and occupa-tion and the number of siblings on ed-ucational achievement are constant over

national-origin groups. Differences in edu-cational achievement would nonetheless beobserved, because the several national-origingroups differ with respect to social origin ortheir mean scores on the respective family-

background characteristics. Only to the ex-tent that the achievement of a national-origingroup exceeds or falls short of the achieve-ment expected on the basis of the group'ssocial origin could an effect of national ori-gin per se on achievement be entertained asa possibility.

Values of the partial regression coefficientssummarizing the relations of the number ofschool years completed by the respondent tofamily head's education and occupation andthe number of siblings are reported in thefirst column of Table 2. Gross or observeddifferences among national-origin groupswith respect to school years completed are

shown in the second column. Appearing inthe third column are the differences ex-pected among these groups on the basis oftheir mean scores on the three family-back-ground characteristics and the partial re-

TABLE 2. SUMMARY OF ANALYSES OF THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL AND NATIONAL ORIGINS ONEDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT: AMERICAN NATIVE CIVILIAN NON-NEGRO MALES OF

NONFARM BACKGROUND, AGED 25 TO 64 IN 1962

Mean Education ScorePartial Partial

Regression Obs. RegressionOrigin Characteristic Coefficients Observed Expected Less Exp. Coefficients

Social Origin

Family Head's-Education .1680 .... .... .... .1898Occupation .0376 .... .... .... .0374

Siblings, Number -.2802 ... .... .... -.2708

National Origin

White, Native Father,Respondent Born-

South .... -0.66 -0.18 -0.48 -0.51North or West .... 0.36 0.38 -0.02 -0.04

White, Foreign Father,Father Born-

USSR .... 1.44 -0.04 1.48 1.51NW Europe, exc. Ireland

and Germany .... 0. 26 0.17 0.09 0.08Ireland .... 0.32 -0.30 0.62 0.63Canada .... 0.16 0.05 0.11 0.09Germany .... -0.54 -0.13 -0.41 -0.42Europe, exc. NW, Italy,

Poland, and USSR .... -0.04 -0.83 0. 79 0.83Poland .... -0.66 -1.18 0.52 0.58Italy .... -0.64 -1.16 0.52 0.57America, exc. Canada .... -2.78 -1.42 -1.36 -1.30All Other a -0.32 -0. 71 0.39 0.42

Nonwhite, exc. Negro a .... -0.12 -0.16 0.04 0.04a Base is fewer than 100 samples cases.

SOURCE: See Table 1.


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gression coefficients summarizing the rela-tion of the education score to the respectivebackground scores for this non-Negro, non-farm, native population as a whole. Both theobserved and expected scores for each groupare expressed as deviations from the meanscore for all respondents. Finally, the fourthcolumn contains a set of estimates of thenational-origin effects per se, the excess ordeficit of the observed score with respectto the expected score.

An alternative set of estimates of the na-tional-origin effects, net of social origin, isreported in the fifth column of Table 2. Therespondent's education score has been re-

gressed not only on family head's educationand occupation and the number of siblings,but also on the national-origin classifica-tion. The classification enters the analysisas a set of dummy variables: the respondentis assigned a score of unity on the variablerepresenting the national-origin class inwhich he holds membership, and a score ofzero on the other variables representingnational-origin classes. (Values of the co-efficients measuring the net effect of nation-ality-group membership are so scaled thattheir weighted sum equals zero.) These esti-mates of the effects on educational achieve-ment of national origin, net of social origin,resemble closely in magnitude the estimatesof national-origin effects obtained in theanalysis reported above.

Although allowance for inter-group dif-ferences in social origin reduces the rangeof difference with respect to educational

achievement by about a third, some 2.8grades separate the mean scores of the high-est-achieving and lowest-achieving national-origin groups, after group starting pointshave been equalized. At the lower limit ofthe range, after as well as before adjustmentfor social origin, are the Latin Americans;the performance of Russian-Americans con-sistently sets the upper limit on the range.Membership in a particular national-origingroup can rather clearly constitute a sub-stantial handicap or bonus in the strati-fication process, although the relative num-bers of individuals holding such membershipmay be too small for the nationality factorto make a major contribution to variation inthe total population. In the subset of dataunder analysis here, for example, the inclu-

sion of national origin as well as social ori-gin as an explanatory factor results in anincrement of only 1.8 percent to the ex-plained variance in educational attainment.

Of -omewhat special interest may be thefinding that membership in a non-Negrominority typically has a positive effect oneducational achievement. In fact, achieve-ment for no minority save the Latin-Ameri-can is damped vis-a-vis the performanceof third-generation Southerners, when allgroups are equalized with respect to startingpoint. Only one other minority, the German-American, could be identified as under-achieving even by the more stringent stand-

ard of performance set by third-generationAmericans born in the North or West.Whatever mechanism one wishes to ad-

duce as causative, there can be little doubtthat a melting-pot phenomenon obtains inAmerica, in at least one sense of that term.The national-origin classification is found toaccount for only three percent of the var-iance among survey respondents with re-spect to grades of school completed. On theother hand, the national-origin classificationaccounts for some 11 percent of the varianceamong the respondents with respect to theformal schooling of their family heads. Therather sharp differentials in formal schoolingby nationality that obtained in the parentalgeneration did not persist among their nativesons, who assimilated the American normsof school attendance.

ORIGINS AND OCCUPATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT

In the basic model of the process of strati-fication suggested by Blau and Duncan(1967, Chap. 5), the effects of social originon occupational achievement are representedas in large measure indirect. The effect of so-cial origin is transmitted to occupationalachievement primarily by way of the in-fluence of origin on educational attainment,which, in turn, influences occupationalachievement. One may entertain the possibil-

ity that members of some minorities maynot secure occupational status consonantwith their educational attainment, however,whether because of high achievement moti-vation not fully realized in the educationalsphere or because of discrimination in thejob market.


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ance has been made not only for their dif-ferences in social origin, but also their dif-ferences with respect to the interveningfactor, educational attainment. The rangeof differences over groups falls from 15 to 7score points and is bounded no longer by theLatin-Americans and Russian-Americans.Such influence as nationality has on achieve-ment appears to operate differently in thejob market than in the schools.

The nationality factor per se does not ap-pear, then, to loom large in the process ofmatching men and jobs. Once equated withrespect to starting point in the social struc-ture and educational attainment, the occupa-

tional achievement of one national-origingroup differs little from that of another.Membership in one of three minorities-Italian-American, Latin-American, or theresidual all other -may depress occupa-tional success by comparison with the normfor the non-Southern third-generation. Eval-uated against the performance of the South-ern third-generation, not only these groupsbut also the men whose origins trace toCanada or Poland suffer a modest handicap.Achieving increasingly greater occupationalsuccess given their social origin and formalschooling are the Irish, the other Euro-peans, the Germans, the Russians, themembers of the minor nonwhite races, andthe men whose origins trace to nations ofnorthwest Europe other than Ireland andGermany.

When the national-origin groups areequated not only with respect to starting

point in the social structure and educationalattainment, but also with respect to startingpoint in the occupational structure as in-dexed by the socioeconomic status scoreof the first job, the description of the na-tionality factor and occupational successremains essentially unchanged. The relevantanalyses are summarized n columns (5) and(6) of Table 3. Nationality does not appearto operate as a common basis for selectivepromotion once entry into the job markethas been effected, although a close readingof the data reveals a few instances in whicha minority loses ground in the competitionfor jobs as work experience lengthens. TheItalian-Americans and Latin-Americans, whoenter near the bottom of the occupationalstructure, appear to accumulate a job-mar-

ket disadvantage; the Russian-Americans,the Irish-Americans, and the group whoseorigin can be traced to other nations ofnorthwestern Europe, all of whom enternear the top of the occupation structure, failto maintain fully their initial job-marketadvantage. Selective promotion or employerdiscrimination on the basis of nationalitycannot be inferred with confidence, however,for the typical pattern of job mobility maybe distinctive for men entering the occupa-tion structure near its extremes irrespectiveof their nationality.

Occupations were somewhat more closelyrelated to national origin in the parental

generation than among the men currentlyin the work force. The national-origin classi-fication accounts for some 4 percent of thevariance in the socioeconomic status scoresfor the family heads' occupations as com-pared with I percent of the variance in thesocioeconomic status scores for the respond-ents' occupations on either the first or cur-rent job. Unlike the intergenerational com-parison of the effect of nationality andeducational attainment, in which the school-ing of many members of the parental genera-tion occurred in foreign countries, the inter-generational comparison with respect to oc-cupational status reflects the placement ofthe respective generations in the Americanoccupational structure. This comparisontakes no account of generational differencesin job qualifications for the several national-origin groups, but it indicates an unambigu-ous narrowing of differences among group

positions in the occupation structure betweengenerations.

EDUCATIONAL OR OCCUPATIONAL

ACHIEVEMENT

The influence of origin, social or national,on occupational achievement can operateeither (a) by way of an effect on educationalachievement which, in turn, influences oc-cupational success or (b) directly, i.e., with-out mediation by schooling. The impact ofsocial origin on occupational achievementoccurs primarily through social differentialsin schooling and educational differentials inoccupational achievement. No such blanketgeneralization can be made, however, withrespect to the transmission of influence


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from the nationality factor to occupationalachievement.

Estimates of the importance of the indi-rect and direct routes of transmission, re-spectively, are derived from partial regres-sion coefficients reported in Tables 2 and 3.The strength of the direct route is reflectedin the magnitude of the partial regressioncoefficent for current occupation on thegiven origin variable when all other originvariables and educational attainment havebeen held constant statistically, as in regres-sion model (4) of Table 3. The strength ofthe indirect route is reflected in the magni-tude of the product of two partial regression

coefficients: current occupation on educa-tional attainment when all original variableshave been held constant statistically (3.94,as given in column (4) of Table 3); andeducational attainment on the given originvariable when all other origin variables havebeen held constant statistically (coefficientsin the fifth column of Table 2). (Numeri-cal values of the two components are givenin parentheses following the names of na-tionality groups discussed in succeedingparagraphs.)

Loosely speaking, the indirect effect of thenationality factor on occupational success re-flects inequalities in the distribution of edu-cation above and beyond those based onsocial origin. The direct effect reflects in-equalities in the distribution of job oppor-tunities above and beyond those based onformal educational qualifications and socialorigin. A national-origin group can sufferdiscrimination

or enjoy preferential treat-ment in either distributive process.Third-generation Southerners (direct,

0.34; indirect, -2.01) and German-Ameri-cans (2.56; -1.65) are detectably handi-capped in the competition for jobs by virtueof their educational under-achievement.Given their formal schooling as well as theirstarting point in the social structure, theSoutherners experience neither discrimina-tion nor preferential treatment in the jobmarket, however, and the German-Ameri-cans encounter somewhat preferential treat-ment in the competition for jobs. Their casesare rather different from that of the Latin-Americans (-1.09; -5.12), who not onlyare severely handicapped in the competitionfor jobs by virtue of educational, under-

achievement, but also encounter discrimina-tion subsequent to school leaving.

Irish-Americans (0.66; 2.48) and Polish-Americans (0.28; 2.29) enjoy a somewhatpreferential position with respect to the dis-tribution of schooling by comparison withother Americans of similar social origin.Their occupational success is, however, inline with the American average for men ofsimilar social origin and educational qualifi-cation. In contrast, the men whose origincan be traced to Russia (2.83; 5.94) or

other Europe (1.22; 3.27), Czechoslova-kia, for example, occupy a distinctly advan-taged position with respect to the distribution

of schooling and a detectably advantagedposition with respect to the distribution ofjobs. Still another distributive pattern isrepresented by the experience of Italian-Americans (-1.07; 2.25). Italians, like theIrish and the Polish, enjoy a somewhat pref-erential position with respect to the distribu-tion of schooling, but their occupationalsuccess falls short of the American averagefor men of similar social origin and educa-tional qualification.

Among the national-origin groups sepa-rately identified here, there occurs but oneinstance of distinctly preferential positionwith respect to the competition for jobs. Thegroup is a rough approximation o the Anglo-Saxon Protestants, stereotypically held toenjoy a favored position in American society.The men whose origin can be traced to na-tions of northwestern Europe other thanIreland and Germany (4.32; 0.32) are pre-ponderantly sons of migrants

from Englandand Wales, the Scandinavian countries, andAustria. There is no evidence that they areover-achievers in the American school sys-tem, but their occupational success isgreater than that of other Americans withsimilar social origin and educational quali-fication.

DISCRIMINATION AGAINST MINORITIES

The experience of non-Negro minoritiesin America, as revealed by these observationson their educational and occupationalachievements would argue against the ex-istence of pervasive discrimination on purelyethnic grounds. The notion of equal oppor-tunity irrespective of national origin is a


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near reality, challenged most severely by thecumulative over-achievement of Russian-Americans and the cumulative under-achieve-ment of Latin-Americans.

The experience of the Negro minority inAmerica, as revealed by comparable obser-vations on their educational and occupa-tional achievements, makes one less sanguineabout the equality with which distributiveprocesses operate in this country. The cur-rent occupations of Latin-Americans are re-flected in a mean socioeconomic status scorewhich falls short of the mean score for allnon-Negro, nonfarm, native males by 15points. The current occupations of Negro-

Americans are reflected in a mean scorewhich falls short of the same (non-Negro)mean by 24 points. After adjustment forstarting point in the social structure andformal educational qualifications, member-ship in the Latin-American minority resultsin a handicap of one point on the socio-eco-nomic status scale; but membership in theNegro minority results in a handicap oftwelve points on this scale (Duncan, 1968).The evidence of discrimination against theAmerican Negro in the competition for jobsis difficult to discount.

Models of the type displayed in this re-port can bring to light the extent and pat-

terns of differentials associated with mi-nority-group status and disclose somethingof their mechanism. Whether the causes ofthe residual factors in differential socialpromotion can be taken to be cultural,structural, or social-psychological in naturecannot be determined with the type of dataavailable for this analysis.

REFERENCES

Blau, Peter M. and Otis Dudley Duncan.1967 The American Occupational Structure.

New York: John Wiley and Sons.Duncan, Beverly.

1965 Family Factors and School Dropout: 1920-1960, Final report on Cooperative ResearchProject No. 2258, Office of Education. AnnArbor: The University of Michigan.

Duncan, Otis Dudley.1968 Inheritance of poverty or inheritance of

race? in Daniel P. Moynihan (ed.),forthcoming volume.

Nam, Charles B.1959 Nationality groups and social stratifica-

tion in America. Social Forces 37 (May):328-33.

Rosen, Bernard C.1959 Race, ethnicity, and the achievement

syndrome. American Sociological Review24 (February):47-60.

Taeuber, Alma F. and Karl E. Taeuber.1968 Recent immigration and studies of eth-

nic assimilation. Demography (forthcom-ing).

duncan and duncan 1968

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