Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children

liberal democracy. So, in this sense at least, the answer to the question that forms the title of della Porta’s book, ‘‘can democracy be saved?’’, is yes. A different question, however, concerns what the future holds: will democracy be saved? No one can claim the answer to that question. However, della Porta’s exploration identifies three important barriers to such a wider transformation that merit further examination. The first is state resistance. In an important chapter on conflicts between these new social movements and governments, della Porta explores the emerging new strategies of police and state repression and control. They are, in some ways, as inventive as the democratic innovations she celebrates elsewhere in the book, though with different implications for democracy. More broadly, we can expect those who now enjoy the privileges of executive or representative power to resist the press for different kinds of democracy. Second, far from embracing state-originated democratic innovations, social movement organizations are often indifferent or skeptical (p. 173). Even though this skepticism is sometimes justified, it is difficult to see how democratic reform will achieve depth or scale absent working alliances between social movement organizations and political officials both committed to that goal. Finally, there is in most societies at present a dearth of political leaders who understand and are open to the project of deepening deliberation and participation in their governance institutions. Sometimes, as with the Workers’ Party in Brazil at the end of the twentieth century, there is a systematic confluence of interest among officials in the political success and expansion of participatory democracy. Much more often, however, officials’ commitments regarding democratic reform are idiosyncratic and episodic. How, then, can public officials be made to take a deeper interest in deepening their democratic institutions? Della Porta argues that social movements are the key, and she is likely correct. The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What It Means for American Schools, by Thomas A. DiPrete and Claudia Buchmann. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2013. 277pp. $37.50 paper. ISBN: 9780871540515.

The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What It Means for American Schools

Working and Growing Up in America. Jeylan T. Mortimer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2003. 304 pp. ISBN 0-674-00923-1. $45.00 (cloth). Does paid work interfere with youth's educational and/or extracurricular activities, thus decreasing youth's chances for positive developmental outcomes? The controversy over whether adolescents should engage in paid work has brewed for decades. Jeylan T. Mortimer, in Working and Growing Up in America, dramatically changes the context of the debate. She provides ample evidence that not only is working in moderation (20 hours or less) through high school not harmful but that steady, low-intensity employment may actually improve developmental outcomes for youth. In 1987, Mortimer initiated a longitudinal study designed to assess how the quantity and quality of paid work affect developmental outcomes of youth. The project began with an initial group of 1,010 Minnesota ninth graders, who were followed through 7 years post-high school (1998). The participant retention rate is one of the many strengths of this study. Mortimer boasts 93% retention at year 4 of the study (participants were seniors), and in 1998, 75.9% of the original participants were still involved. The research design is also an excellent study. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from the students and their parents in order to reveal the developmental processes and trajectories of both working and nonworking youth. Working and Growing Up in America not only adds to the body of knowledge regarding the consequences of paid work on youth development but is also a fine example of credible social science research. This was inarguably a massive research project, yet Mortimer adopts a comfortable, easy-to-understand tone throughout the book. She speaks softly, yet systematically refutes all of the usual arguments against paid youth work. Each chapter begins with an overview of relevant research literature and concludes with a concise summary. The limitations of the research are clearly indicated. The author acknowledges that problems are inherent in self-reported data, and that findings may or may not be generalizable to other populations or geographic regions. Chapter 1 is a lively introduction to the debate over whether youth should engage in paid work. Mortimer sets the stage for later chapters with a brief sociohistorical account of youth employment in the United States, and a balanced presentation of the potential positive and negative consequences of paid work for youth. She introduces the Youth Development Study (YDS) in Chapter 2, where she details the data collection protocols. In Chapter 3, Mortimer discusses how youth allocate time among various activities. She differentiates between household work, schoolwork, volunteer work, and paid work, and then makes a compelling case that developmental outcomes may be related to individual (subjective) perceptions of each type of "work." She introduces a typology of youth work characterized by duration and intensity of work. The identified categories are quite useful throughout the book for understanding how the complex processes of youth development can be affected by paid employment. Chapter 4 explores paid youth work relative to the other youth work environments previously discussed. …

Working and Growing Up in America

This paper summarizes the dramatic changes in relative male-females educational attainment over the past three decades. Stock measures of education among the entire adult population show rising attainment levels for both men and women, with men enjoying an advantage in schooling levels throughout this interval. Cohort specific analysis reveals that these stock measures mask two interesting patterns: (a) gender difference at the cohort level had vanished by the early 1950 birth cohort and reversed sign ever since; (b) for several cohorts, attainment rates were flat for women and flat and falling for men. This last is puzzling in the face of the large college premia that these cohorts observed when making their schooling choices. We present a simple human capital model showing how the anticipated dispersion of future wages should affect educational investment and find that a model which includes measures of future earnings dispersion fits the data for relative schooling patterns quite well.

Gender Differences in Completed Schooling

Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It’s Good for Everyone. By Richard Settersten and Barbara Ray. New York: Bantam, 2010. Pp. 272. $15.00 (paper).

Sociological research examines the gender gap reversal in higher education and the gender division in paid and unpaid labor for adult women, especially “the second shift literature,” as two distinc...

Boys, Girls, and the Second Shift: Paid and Unpaid Labor in High School and Adolescents’ Enrollment in College:

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Boys, Girls, and the Second Shift: Paid and Unpaid Labor in High School and Adolescents’ Enrollment in College: