Nsttute for Research on Pover 1 Yd

pursuant to the provisions of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. The author is grateful to David L. Featherman for helpful comments on an earlier draft and to Arthur S. Goldberger for helpful discussions at several stages, but neither colleague necessarily agrees with any part of the current version. ABSTRACT The book under review deals with modelS which identify and measure factors determining a man's educational, income, and occupational attainments. The factors include parental background, number of siblings, models and their estimation constitute a body of research that should be interesting and important to a variety of social scientists and highly relevant to the questions of the causes and consequences of poverty. Although the mathematical and statistical techniques used are sometimes complex, even the nontechnical reader can learn much from the methodologi-cal discussions. The review adopts a critical posture in the hope of suggesting ways in which this type of research could reach a wider audience and contribute more effectively to the application of social science to coping with social problems. This book is impressive, almost overpowering, in the scope of its subject matter, methodological erudition, technical virtuosity, and substantive empirical findings. In general terms, the book deals with the construction of models which identify factors determining a man's income and educational and occupational attainments. Clearly, these outcomes are largely responsible for one's social achievements, status, even well-being; and for this reason the models should be of intense interest to scholars among several disciplines in the social sciences. The following list of variables which are examined as determinants of these achievement outcomes should further whet the appetites across disciplines: parental back-and child-spacing-some of which variables are, of course, interesting outcomes in their own right. The models developed consist of systems of equations. The outcome variables are dependent variables which are systematically determined by three types of independent variables: background variables, such as race and father's education; intervening variables, such as intelligence and peer group influences; and career contingencies, such as age at first job and migration. The system of equations represents a temporal sequence of outcomes, which means that a "first" outcome variable, like educational attainment, can also be an independent variable in the second equation in .-..2 which occupational attainment is the outcome. This recursive structure allows estimating the parameters or relationships among the variables by ordinary, least-squares regression methods. The basic data source is a large survey of …