Meir Yaish

• D.Phil
• University of Haifa

We review results from previous research on the dynamics of earnings inequality in Israel. For as diverse society as Israel, we focus attention on the role of education in producing differential earnings trajectories between men and women, Jews and Arabs, and Ashkenazi‐Jews and Mizrahi‐Jews. This review highlights the importance of the longitudinal...

Only about half of the ultra-Orthodox men in Israel dedicate their lives mainly to religious studies, while the rest participate in the labor market. Utilizing siblings with different labor market outcomes sampling, we collected retrospective data on ultra-Orthodox men who earn a living (N = 107), matched to their brothers (N = 103) who study in ye...

Although most studies of the transition from school to work take a snapshot perspective in examining economic returns to education, such returns evolve over an individual’s lifetime. We empirically test a theoretical formulation derived from the cumulative advantage mechanism about enduring life-cycle effects of educational mobility on income. We a...

As part of the efforts of higher education to reach additional audiences, this study deals with an alternative non-traditional pathway that leads to higher academic education. This alternative, the stackable credentials pathway, uses short-cycle tertiary VET as a way to an academic degree. The study describes the extent of users of the pathway in I...

We test a prediction of cumulative advantage theory about enduring life cycle effects of educational mobility on earnings. We identify four mobility groups by cross-classifying parental education (degree/no degree) by their offspring (degree/no degree) and study the long-term economic consequences of intergenerational educational mobility. Data for...

Focusing on the intergenerational educational association alone obscures discussions of downward and upward mobility and immobility patterns, which entail different life experiences and their potential consequences. Utilizing data on Israelis aged 25–32 years old over three periods, the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, during which tertiary education expan...

Recruiting the cumulative advantage mechanism, this study explores how earnings inequality between dominant and minority groups in the same society unfolds over the life course. Jews and Palestinian Israeli Arabs in Israel’s economy provide the context for this study. We find that the earnings gap between the groups has widened over time, particula...

Atheoretical formulation derived from the cumulative advantage literature, that intergenerational educational mobility has enduring life-course income effects above and beyond individuals’ education, is empirically tested. This formulation contrasts sharply with both the human capital model, which does not consider parental education as a determina...

Vocational and academic curricula are said to hold both short-term and long-term consequences for economic outcomes. The literature on this topic, however, fails to address the long-term consequences of educational tracking. Just as important, this literature did not examine returns to high-school tracking within levels of further education. This p...

Sociologists and economists differ in how they study intergenerational social mobility. For sociologists, intergenerational mobility is examined between economic standings, such as class, which are multidimensional, and derived from an individual’s position in the labor market. Economists, instead, have a unidimensional view on this issue, and thus...

This study demonstrates that studying ethnic/racial inequality on the basis of cross-sectional data conceals how such inequality might unfold over the life course. Moving beyond a snapshot perspective, we ask, Do Israel’s Jewish ethnic groups differ in their long-term earnings trajectories? Analyzing nearly 20 years of registered earnings data, the...

Standard economic theory cannot explain why so few Haredi (ultra-orthodox) men attain college degrees in Israel, despite the significant economic returns to such degrees. In addition to economic variables, this article introduces a combination of social and behavioral characteristics, such as religious identity, into the individual choice process....

Although gender inequalities in education have greatly changed in recent decades with young women outpacing young men, girls and boys continue to study in gender-typical fields of study. Recognizing that boys and girls might have different educational preferences, we conceptualized gender differentiation as an outcome of both socialization processe...

This study exploits the unique demographic structure of the Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel and their geographical immobility in order to help resolve the riddle why women in the Middle East and North Africa are less likely to participate in the labor force than women elsewhere in the world. We show that, controlling for economic variables, Mus...

Gender differences in perceived quality of employment (achievement, content, job insecurity, time autonomy and physical and emotional conditions) are examined. The study asks whether women's occupations provide better conditions in areas that facilitate their dual role in society, as a trade-off for low monetary rewards. Specifically, it examines t...

It is commonly argued that social mobility rates are influenced by economic and political conditions. Nevertheless, research on this issue has tended to be hindered by two limitations that make it difficult to draw strong conclusions about contextual effects: (1) seldom have country-level and individual-level influences been tested simultaneously,...

Utilizing International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data, we explore the relationship between economic inequality—both at the individual-level and the national-level—and attitudes toward income inequality in 20 capitalist societies. Our findings suggest that experience of economic inequality has an enduring effect on attitudes. Specifically, respo...

Most studies of the determinants of cultural capital have used taste or participation as interchangeable indicators of embodied cultural capital. In this article, we propose to treat the two concepts separately. Specifically, we argue that participation is constrained to a larger degree by financial resources than by tastes and to a lesser degree b...

The rescue of persecuted minorities – such as the Jews in Nazi occupied Europe – is seen in this paper as taking place in a peculiar market. In such a market rescuers face at least two dilemmas. Firstly, they might be willing to help but be uncertain how to go about rescuing. Secondly, they might be unsure over the nature of the request to help. To...

Most studies of the determinants of cultural capital have used taste or participation as interchangeable indicators of embodied cultural capital. In this article, we propose to treat the two concepts separately. Specifically, we argue that participation is constrained to a larger degree by financial resources than by tastes and to a lesser degree b...

The rescue of Jews in WWII and electoral participation both constitute prominent puzzles for rational choice theories of human behavior and have given rise to lengthy debates about norms and rationality. To explain both phenomena, we apply the Model of Frame Selection. This theory of action provides an integrated account of norms and rationality, w...

This article argues that cross‐national diversity in women’s concentration in the public sector explains a substantial part of the cross‐national variation in the gender gap in job authority. Using data on individuals in 26 countries represented in the 2005 International Social Survey Program module on Work Orientation (supplemented by societal‐lev...

The dynamic of Israeli women's labour market experiences is analysed, with the focus on three main determinants of their attachment to the labour market: (i) family events, particularly the effect and timing of childbirth on women's market involvement, (ii) human capital, and (iii) structural determinants, including occupation, and sector of employ...

Rational choice theories of education view student's educational decision as a sequence of binary choices between options that entail long-term utility and options that reduce short-term risk of failure. One of the best articulated models of educational choice asserts that choice between alternative options is affected by students' utility consider...

In this article we study the determinants of cultural participation in Israel with an emphasis on the Weberian distinction between class and status. The class measure is based on occupational groupings, and status is operationalized as a rank of occupations based on social distance. We expect that class will be less important than status in shaping...

In this article we start from Boudon's important, but still surprisingly neglected, distinction between `primary' and `secondary' effects in the creation of class differentials in educational attainment. Primary effects are all those, whether of a genetic or socio-cultural kind, that are expressed via the association between children's class backgr...

This paper discusses the significance of status versus class in explaining the distribution of musical tastes among Jews in Israel. We analyze 15 music genres and four clusters that represent different musical realms: highbrow, western popular, mixed popular and eastern-religious popular.We embed the status versus class question in the particular f...

In sociology it has been much debated whether the normativist-culturalist or the rational choice perspective better explains social phenomena. Since each has received considerable empirical support, an integrated account of norms and rationality is much needed. The Model of Frame Selection offers such an integration. In this model, cost-benefit cal...

Social class differentials in educational attainment have been extensively studied in numerous countries. In this paper, we begin by examining class differentials in the progression to higher secondary education among 16-year-old children in England and Wales. As has been shown for other countries, the differentials result both from the primary eff...

in 1927, at the age of eighteen, jean kowalyk moved to the ukrainian village of czortowiec, where she worked as a seamstress. when the germans invaded in 1941, they brought to the village forced laborers to build a work camp. jean “watched the cruelty [done to the workers] day after day […] when i saw people being molested, my religious heart whisp...

Incl. bibl., abstract. Research on the transition from post-secondary education to the labour market refers mainly to differences between academic and vocational tracks in secondary education. In this paper we analyse Israeli data focusing on the transition from different levels of post secondary degrees and from various fields of study to the labo...

This paper examines party preferences in Israel from 1993 to 1999. This period provides a unique ‘natural’ experiment in that the middle was marked by a change from a single-ballot party list to a two-ballot system that included direct election of the Prime Minister. The paper has two goals: (1) to explore the patterns of social cleavage voting in...

This article adopts a 'structural perspective' of earnings determinants to examine changes over time in the gender earnings gap in Israeli society. It studies the combined effect of the expansion of the services and public sector employment on the gender earnings gap, utilizing data from the 1972 and 1995 censuses in Israel. It shows that within th...

A commonly held view argues that immigration is a major force propelling social mobility. Since, by definition, the immigration process entails a separation of individuals from their communities, it is argued that a relatively weak association exists between the immigrant's social position (in their country of origin) and that of their offspring (i...

Despite the fact that in many societies ethnicity plays an important role in stratification processes, a common view held by students of stratification argues that the role of ascriptive criteria in stratification processes is diminishing, and that the main axis of the modern stratification system is rooted in the division of labour in the marketpl...

Despite the fact that in many societies ethnicity plays an important role in stratification processes, a common view held by students of stratification argues that the role of ascriptive criteria in stratification processes is diminishing, and that the main axis of the modern stratification system is rooted in the division of labour in the marketpl...

* We are grateful to Diego Gambetta for encouraging us to pursue this research and for his many suggestions. Samuel P. Oliner, the director of the'Altruistic Personality Project', has shared with us the data he collected on rescuers of Jews during the Nazi occupation of Europe. Without his generous act, this paper would have never been written. We...

This paper engages in the ongoing debate concerning the consequences of the industrialization process for social mobility. At the heart of this debate is the ‘liberal thesis’ which states that the industrialization process brings about not only more opportunity for social mobility, but also more equality of opportunity. This paper examines changes...

The rescue of persecuted minorities - such as the Jews in Nazi occupied Europe - is seen in this paper as taking place in a peculiar market. In such a market rescuers face at least two dilemmas. Firstly, they might be willing to help but be uncertain how to go about rescuing. Secondly, they might be unsure over the nature of the request to help. To...

This fascinating comparative study presents the latest research into the value of qualifications for the attainment of first job, and in securing employment. A team of some of the world’s leading scholars in the field examine the ways in which educational qualifications affect the occupational outcomes of men and women in thirteen countries. The bo...

Sociologists view education as the pivot in the process of social stratification in economically advanced societies. While educational attainment is largely determined by the characteristics of people's social origins, it is, in turn, an important determinant of their subsequent life chances—their occupational and economic attainments as well as th...

The rescue of persecuted minorities - such as the Jews in Nazi occupied Europe - is seen in this paper as taking place in a peculiar market. In such a market rescuers face at least two dilemmas. Firstly, they might be willing to help but be uncertain how to go about rescuing. Secondly, they might be unsure over the nature of the request to help. To...

Abstract Rational choice,theories,of education view student's,educational,decision as a sequence,of binary choices,between,options,that entail long-term utility and,options,that reduce,short-term risk of failure. One of the best articulated models of educational choice (Breen and Goldthorpe, 1997)

Bourdieu's (1987 [1979]) theorization of cultural capital treats attitudes, preferences, and behavior as forms of embodied cultural capital. 1 As such, these are often considered parallel forms of embodied cultural capital that receive different empirical manifestations in various works (Lamont and Lareau 1988), without attention to the implication...