Status attainment in China, 1949-1982

In functionalist theory, industrialization promotes achievement-based universalism in status placement and reduces ascription. This result is expected to occur because economic efficiency depends upon it. However, no one has systematically examined the possible, disruptive effect of massive political efforts to promote equality at the expense of meritocratic universalism. Yet, precisely this effort was made in China. As a socialist country, China stressed egalitarianism and Marxist theory, utilizing state power to interfere with meritocratic status placement. This dissertation examines the result of that massive effort.; My principal source of data is a 1% public use sample of the 1982 Chinese census. From this census, I extracted multi-generational households in which fathers and sons resided together. These households did not differ from the Chinese population on important matching criteria The multi-generational households permitted me statistically to analyze the impact of social background on son's occupational placement for successive birth cohorts.; Results show that modernization affects status attainment in China in the same basic way that it affects other countries. One's educational achievement is the most important determinant of occupational placement in China. As elsewhere, the effect of son's social origins on his occupational placement declines with the passage of time. However, in China political interference did interrupt the main trend. Men in the cohort of the Cultural Revolution attained fewer years of education than would otherwise have been expected. They also exhibited different effects of social origin than did other men. Radical political movements rendered the peasantry even more disadvantaged in education, but improved the occupational status the peasants attained through other channels. Party cadres enjoyed a distinctive and advantageous influence on their sons' status attainment. One's own education was not so important a determinant of becoming a cadre as it was for professionals.