Educational Stratification, School Expansion, and Public Policy in Hong Kong

Educational Stratification, School Expansion, and Public Policy in Hong KongAuthor(s): David PostSource: Sociology of Education, Vol. 67, No. 2 (Apr., 1994), pp. 121-138Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2112700 .

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Educational Stratification, School Expansion, and Public Policy in Hong Kong

David Post Pennsylvania State University

During the 1970s, there was increased state action in Hong Kong's previously privatized educational system. In 1971, primary education was made free and compulsory, and in 1978, free and compulsory education was extended to the first three years of secondary education. This article examines the consequences of this deliberate expansion of secondary school participation using samples from the 1976, 1981, and 1986 Hong Kong censuses to predict continuation in the two levels of secondary schools on the basis of family resources and gender. Hong Kong's expansion of education, the evidence suggests, had a substantial impact on the ability of young people, especially girls, to continue to secondary school, regardless of income.

A lthough sociologists understand that increases in a nation's school enrollment can affect educational

stratification, it is more difficult to iden- tity the underlying role of public policy or, more broadly, the state as a political actor. Can state policies, by themselves, alter such a basic social fact as educational stratification? Can state action- independent of concurrent, broader economic change-modify the link between children's social origins and their educational attainment? These questions do not submit easily to empirical study, partly because state actions are difficult to measure and partly because they are often as much the consequence as the cause of broader societal change. Investigating historical trends in the mobility of Ameri- can men, Featherman and Hauser (1978: 484) attributed their findings to the changing U.S. economy, to population growth, and to immigration. Yet they suspected that "aside from shifts in the economy and demographic trends, the process of stratification also is affected by both planned and unplanned actions by the state," an area for which there were no direct measures.

Not only is state action difficult to measure empirically, but its primacy in the expansion of schooling is open to

question. Whereas earlier critics (see, for example, Bowles and Gintis 1976) argued that the expansion of public schooling was imposed by the state on behalf of dominant industrial interests, more recent researchers (Rubinson 1986) on educational expansion in the United States have tended to downplay the planned actions of the state. If the state's primacy in the expansion of schooling can no longer be assumed, then neither can the accompanying trends in educational stratification-the changed association between students' backgrounds and their school attainment-be laid at the door of public policy.

Except in the South, where educational opportunity among disenfran- chised citizens was truly constrained by a power elite under Jim Crow laws (Walters 1992; Walters, McCammon, and James 1990), in this country school expansion has been neither led nor constrained by the state. Outside the South, an elastic supply of public school places has grown to meet an increasing social demand for participation. This social demand was not always engen- dered by the state and may have derived from deeper changes in the structure of production, along with popular ideals of mass schooling.

SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION 1994, VOL. 67 (APRIL):121-138 121



122 Post

Thus, inferences about the effects of educational policies are problematic. It is difficult even to frame research on the extent to which the public sponsorship of schooling changed the effects of status origins on attainment. Because Ameri- cans have received comparatively large quantities of free public school places from the government, fluctuations in the effect of family background on educational attainment and changes in the consequent educational stratification cannot be attributed to the policies regulat- ing the supply of education. Instead, these trends could have resulted from more deep-seated labor market or demographic changes, which were causally exogenous both to the social demand for education and to the supply of schools by local governments.

This article examines some of the consequences of a public education policy in Hong Kong-the deliberate decision by the Hong Kong government to assume responsibility for lower secondary education, expanding the number of free places for students and reducing the number of children who were forced to pay for their Form 1-3 school years in the private sector. In contrast to demand- led school expansion, as in the United States, the contemporary state-led expansion of public education in Hong Kong came after a long period of state con- straint on free places. As a colony, Hong Kong maintains tight bureaucratic control over many public welfare institutions, much tighter even than that exer- cised on education in such "strong" states as France (cf. Garnier, Hage, and Fuller 1989; Hage and Garnier 1992; Hage, Garnier, and Fuller 1988). For this reason, Hong Kong presents an ideal environment for the sociological study of state-led school expansion.

Because the governance of education lies completely outside Hong Kong's limited political apparatus and is controlled exclusively by the executive branch, overt social demand played only a minor role in universalizing the first three years of secondary school. As distinct from the U.S. case, children's participation in Hong Kong's lower secondary level (equivalent to American junior high school) was controlled al-

most entirely by increasing governmental subsidy and the corresponding growth of school places for students (Post 1993). During the 1970s, a latent demand for public education at this level was re- flected in parents' willingness to send their children to private secondary schools that frequently charged high tuition. With the appointment of a La- bour party governor in 1971, social welfare reforms, including the expansion of publicly supported lower secondary school places, were instituted in the colony. This reform became an explicit policy in 1978, when the gover- nor declared that there should be free and universal lower secondary education (up to Form 3).

In Hong Kong, as elsewhere, it is understood that students' educational attainments are partly determined by their family resources and by their gender (Tang 1983). In a word, educational stratification exists. How effective in attenuating family resource and gender effects was the government's policy of providing free places at the lower secondary school level? In this article, I address that question using household census data from 1976, 1981, and 1986. From the household data, I constructed individual data sets for three separate five-year birth cohorts of youths who were aged 16-20 at the time of the respective censuses. Youths in this age group ordinarily have completed lower secondary school and have continued either to Forms 4-6 (upper secondary) or have entered the labor force. In these census data, the income and educational characteristics of parents can be at- tached to observations of all youths who were living with their parents at the time of the census (more than 80 percent of the age group).

Logistic response models for two school transitions - from primary to lower secondary school and from lower to upper secondary school-are then estimated on the basis of father's income, household size, mother's education, and student's gender. Three alternative specifications of these models are used to illustrate the effects on state policy of three alternative policy indicators. As indicators of policy, I alternatively use



Educational Stratification, Expansion, and Public Policy 123

(1) the year in which lower secondary education officially became a public responsibility (1978); (2) the annual recurrent governmental expenditure for secondary education in each year; and (3) in each year, the proportion of the potential demand for lower and upper secondary school places that the government provided free of charge to continuing students.

Pooling the 1956-70 birth cohorts, I calculated the main effects of each indicator of public policy, as well as their interactions with father's income. Apart from the main effects of the three policy indicators, their interactions with father's income enabled me to gauge the impact of family resources, assuming different levels of governmental commitment to publicly funded education. It was important to compare these interaction effects in each of the two continuation points to see whether family resources became more important at the later level as they declined in importance at the earlier selection point.

Similarly, the main effects of students' gender are estimated in each of the three models, as well as the interactions of the policy indicators with being female. An educational policy that is effective in changing the role of gender in students' attainment will show change at the first selection point (continuation to lower secondary school) without moving the effect of gender to the subsequent point of selection (into upper secondary school, Forms 4-6). The results of the models give evidence of the efficacy of Hong Kong's free-education policy in remov- ing-not simply postponing-some of the effects of family background and gender.

THE SETTING

Hong Kong is an ideal site in which to study a government's impact on educational stratification through the public support of schools. Unlike the U.S. case, in Hong Kong the underlying causes of expanded secondary school participation and educational opportunity can be traced directly to public policy deci-

sions.1 As a colonial government, Hong Kong provides social services more au- tocratically than do most nations. In contrast to representative democracies, there are few vehicles for the public discussion of schooling, nor is there any effective parents' group to lobby for it. Until the late 1980s, there were no effective political parties. For this reason, the expansion of school places did not respond to popular demands by parents (although pressure from the nascent Professional Teachers Union may have played a minor role). Before the 1980s, no part of the government's legitimacy rested on popular support or on the perception that it offered education equitably to all, regardless of income level or gender. The discussion of educational expansion was couched entirely in the language of manpower planning and economic efficiency.

In this political context, free and universal lower secondary education was promulgated by the autonomous executive branch after a 1978 decree by governor Murray MacLehose, who con- sulted with only two advisers (Cheng 1987). MacLehose announced this change in the official policy in response to criticism, at a meeting of the European Economic Community, of the prevalence of child labor in the British colony. Although some believe that the aim of the Labour party's ideals for progressive

'Although this article deals only with educational opportunity at the secondary level, Hong Kong's ongoing expansion of postsecondary education similarly derived from external factors, especially from anxiety over the 1997 reunification with China following the 1989 repression of students in Tiananmen Square. Following that event David Wilson, the Hong Kong governor, acting by fiat, announced new plans to transform Hong Kong's elite higher education system into a mass system, expanding participation rates from less than 10 percent to 25 percent in five years. Like the 1978 announcement by Murray MacLehose, the decision to expand higher education was made with minimal consultation and in the absence of "grass-roots" input or lobbying by Hong Kong pressure groups. For a critical perspective, see Morris, McClelland, and Leung (in press).



124 Post

improvement in Hong Kong was to promote equal opportunities for all children, there is widespread speculation that the shift in policy would not have occurred without the lobbying of British trade unions, which were concerned with unfair competition from child labor in Hong Kong. In either case, although equity was never stated as a reason for the expansion of education, after 1978, only the upper secondary school (Forms 4-6) continued to charge fees.

The ability of the Hong Kong government to constrain the supply of free schooling until the 1970s is notable when contrasted with the worldwide pattern of expansion (Dore 1976; Ramirez and Ventresca 1992). The expansion of Western organizational models of education has proceeded rapidly, even in countries with military governments and non-Western legacies of education, such as Nigeria (see Morgan and Armer 1992), or in countries with declining fiscal health and declarations of other educational goals than expansion, such as Peru (see Post 1991). Discussing French education, Garnier et al. (1989:286) noted three ways in which "strong states" restrict and regulate the supply of schooling: through dual educational systems, through the slow construction of schools, and through d'ifficult examinations at several points to screen out students who would transit to the next level. Education in Hong Kong has been char- acterized by all three restrictions of supply.

Yet, over and above these institutional controls, there was a much more direct means of slowing expansion: school fees. Hong Kong's Education Department supported four types of "public" secondary schools. First, there were the "government" schools, which were fully controlled by the Education Department and whose employees were given civil service status. Second, there were the prestigious "grant" schools, run by au- tonomously governed nonprofit organi- zations that were granted a determined amount of funding, depending on their schools' enrollments. Two other types of public schools were the "aided" and the "assisted" schools, for which different formulas were used to subsidize organi-

zations with looser autonomy, also on a per-pupil basis. Teachers in all four types of public schools worked on the same salary scales, although they received different amounts of fringe bene- fits.

Before 1968, all these public schools combined admitted less than 16 percent of the students who finished primary school. Most students who continued to the lower secondary level had to do so in entrepreneurial private schools, of widely varying quality, that charged a broad range of tuition. Beginning in the early 1970s, the government increased its subsidization of education. It did so not through granting raises to teachers or reducing the size of classes in the existing public schools, but through "buying" places for additional students in the entrepreneurial private schools. In no case were schools simply given public funding and then allowed to serve as many or as few students as they desired. Funding was linked to the number of subsidized places that schools agreed to provide, and the total number of places was rigidly controlled by planners in Hong Kong's Education De- partment.

What did the state's leadership in educational expansion accomplish in Hong Kong? Clearly, it brought about changes on many fronts simultaneously. It may have heralded the end of the home-production economy, whereby children assisted parents in piecework from small factories, and expanded schooling may thus have indirectly helped to restructure the workforce of Hong Kong's important clothing manu- facturing industries. In addition, the purely symbolic consequences of state- led school expansion under Governor MacLehose ought not to be underesti- mated. As the desire for mass schooling spreads worldwide, an ethos of progress and modernity comes to be associated with formal education. Governmental actions that make education more acces- sible may communicate the value at- tached to schooling by modern societies, a value that parents may then expect will lead to better personal futures for their children, as well as social progress (Fuller and Rubinson 1992:21).




Although such indirect effects of increased support undoubtedly contrib- uted to the growth of secondary school participation, there was also a much more immediate consequence for the typical family: the elimination of fees for an ever-larger proportion of students as publicly funded places gradually became available. The intended consequence of the increased subsidies was that families would be able to reduce the direct costs they paid for education even while expanding the amount of education they could provide for their children. This is, in fact, what happened. Surveys indicate that in 1964, households were forced to earmark 6.7 percent of their total expenditures for school fees, textbooks, uniforms, and the like; by 1985, these direct costs accounted for only 1.9 percent of the average household expenditures (Cost of Living Survey 1965, 1985). In addition to other more subtle effects on participation, it is likely that the elimination of school fees, and the concomitant expansion of public lower secondary education, has had a direct impact on the opportunities of families to allow their children to continue in school.

METHOD

Sources of Data and Research Methods

Logistic response models of educational attainment were developed to compare the dynamic relationships among ascription, social structure, the educational organization, and the likelihood of persistence in the school system. Because, as Campbell (1983:59) noted, one cannot examine the impact of social structure by holding it constant, researchers have studied the links between social structure and life chances over time and across societies. Based not on years attained but on the log of the odds of continuing through the sequence of school levels, logistic response models estimate the effects of family background on the likelihood of continuing from level to level in the school system. Because their coefficients are comparable over time and across societies, such models provide insight into the dyna-

mism of social stratification historically and internationally (Mare 1979, 1981). Recent comparative international research has focused on trends in ascrip- tive factors that lead to progress through the sequences of students' educational careers (Shavit and Blossfeld 1993).2

To examine the effect of family background on participation in school, as well as the impact of public policy on these trends, the best available sources are the random 1 percent samples of data from the 1976, 1981, and 1986 Hong Kong censuses. From these samples I selected individuals who were aged 16-20 at the time of each census. Since one of the transition points of this research was from lower to upper secondary school (occurring "on schedule" at age 15), persons aged 16 were the youngest possible cohort whose transitions could be analyzed. Merging all three census samples, I then constructed artificial birth cohorts from 1956 through 1970. As can be seen in Table 1, the census sample in each year included 872 to 1,199 individuals in each age group.

The Hong Kong census-like other censuses-collects information only about individuals, not about their family backgrounds. But census data are hierar- chical, that is, they are gathered in households. In most cases, for youths aged 16-20, the "head of household" was their mother or their father. Con- versely, most individuals who were 16-20 years old at the time of the censuses were the sons or daughters of the persons listed as their household heads. This method captured an ever larger percentage of the 16-20-year-old population because more and more, young people in Hong Kong are living

2 There are conditions under which a logistic response model produces results that seemingly contradict the results of linear ordinary least-squares rmodels. In Hong Kong, for example, whereas the linear effect of father's occupation declined in significance as a determinant of the total number of school years attained, the effect increased in terms of the transition to university (Pong and Post 1991). Such findings are actually consistent with similar research in Hungary (Simkus and Andorka 1982) and the Philip- pines (Smith and Cheung 1986).



126 Post

with their parents in nuclear families (rather than in the traditional Chinese extended family households, which may be headed by the paternal grandparents). On average, over 80 percent of the 16-20-year-old population were the children of the household heads in the three census years. Thus, I could match the income and educational attainment of the parents with information on their children for more than 80 percent of the individuals who were aged 16-20 in each year. From 1956 to 1970, this matching yielded information on the family backgrounds, as well as the educational attainment and gender, of more than 80 percent of the persons born in each year.

Variables The census indicators of educational

attainment were then redefined to make them comparable across census years. Whereas in 1976 the census queried only the last level of schooling attained,

in 1981 and 1986 it asked for more detailed information about the years attained and the type of school attended. All measures of education were recoded into three dichotomous groups: primary completed, or not; lower secondary school attained, or not; and upper secondary school attained, or not. From these variables, two indicators of transition were calculated: continuation to lower secondary school (given the completion of primary school) and continuation to upper secondary school (given the completion of lower secondary school). Sum- mary statistics of these dependent variables are presented in Table 2.

I then estimated logistic regression coefficients for the determinants of each of the two transition points: continuation from the last year of primary school ("primary 6") to the first year of lower secondary school ("Form 1") and continuation from Form 3 of lower secondary school to the first year of upper secondary school ("Form 4"). In addition, two family background factors that are known

Table 1. Total Number of Youths Aged 16-20 in 1 Percent Census Samples and Percentage Who Were Sons or Daughters of Household Heads

1976 1981 1986

Percentage Percentage of Percentage of Age at Time Total of Sons Total Sons or Total Sons or of Census Number or Daughters Number Daughters Number Daughters

16 1,155 86 963 85 872 90 17 938 85 1,041 84 923 87 18 1,132 80 1,199 80 978 85 19 962 79 1,132 73 943 85 20 928 73 1,111 73 1,018 82

Table 2. Attainment and Family Background of Youths Aged 16-20, by Census Year (standard deviations in parentheses)a

Census Year Variable 1976 1981 1986

Completed .945 .977 .987 primary school (.227) (.149) (.111)

Continued to .735 .887 .971 lower secondary school (.441) (.317) (.246)

Continued to .804 .790 .788 upper secondary school (.397) (.407) (.408)

Mother's years 2.850 3.433 5.190 of schooling (3.411) (3.624) (4.682)

Father's log 6.855 7.480 8.040 monthly income (.592) (.618) (.636)

Usual size 6.567 6.181 5.686 of household (2.066) (1.926) (1.822) a Values are for the sample of children who lived in households headed by one of their parents.




to regulate educational stratification and that were present in the data were entered in the model: the mother's years of education and the father's income (expressed as the log of the monthly income). I also included the usual household size in the model to control for the per capita effects of father's income: Depending on the number of mouths to feed, the father's monthly income should have different effects on the family's ability to forgo the child's potential earnings. The importance of the main effects of these three variables -mother's education, father's income, and household size-will be seen in educational stratification at the transition points to lower secondary school and the upper secondary school. The interaction of income with policy variables will indicate how effective free education has been in attenuating the role of family resources. For the policy to be considered successful, the role of family background must be eliminated at both levels, not simply pass from the first to the subsequent transition point.

The effect of the student's sex was also estimated. In Chinese society, a special premium is placed on the value of sons (for a review of the literature, see Green- halgh 1985), and the traditional lineage system of China distributed family wealth only through sons. Parents prefer sons to such a degree that China's "one-child" policy has been suspected of contribut- ing to female infanticide (Banister 1987).

Although Hong Kong appears to be out- wardly "Western," gender inequality per- sists in the distribution of family resources, including resources available for education. To the extent that parents con- sider the education of their children an investment in their own old-age support (since Hong Kong has no retirement system), the fact that sons have traditionally supported parents makes discrimination against daughters likely. On the one hand, the education of sons will promote the economic security of parents in their later years. On the other hand, until they are married, Hong Kong daughters often work to contribute to the total family income (Salaaf 1981). Because of the importance of gender inequality in traditional Chi- nese systems of educational stratification,

I included a variable for sex in the transition models. The main effects of being female in the model reveal the extent to which gender has figured into educational stratification at each level. The interaction effects of gender with policy indicators reveal how effective the provision of free schooling has been in attenuating the role of gender. Summary statistics for the independent variables are presented in Table 2.

Indicators of Policy

To gauge the changes in governmental policy during the 15-year period covered in this study, I used three different indicators.

MacLehose's decision. As the simplest measure, I created a dummy variable for the year Governor MacLehose mandated free and universal Form 1-3 education. In 1978, as a previous investigation (Post 1993) showed, the announcement by Mac- Lehose went beyond symbolism and sub- stantially promoted attendance at lower secondary schools by greater proportions of youths. Thus, MacLehose's decision was different from what is seen in countries where compulsory schooling is legislated only after it has already become universal.3 The dummy variable that I used indicates whether or not the MacLe- hose policy had been mandated by the time the person was aged 12. I expected to find large positive coefficients for this indicator and a substantively significant effect on the likelihood of continuing from primary 6 to Form 1. The impact of this indicator is less clear on the subsequent transition from Form 3 to Form 4 (still noncompulsory and fee charging): De- creased selectivity at the lower level often brings about increased selection at the next.

In terms of the impact that the MacLe- hose policy had on the role of family resources, one would expect a negative interaction term in the model of access to lower secondary school: If fees were

3 The 1978 policy was also more substantively important than Hong Kong's 1971 policy of compulsory primary education, since 94 percent of the relevant cohort had already finished primary school in 1971.



128 Post

waived for parents who contemplated sending their children to lower secondary schools, then the determining role of the fathers' income would certainly decline in importance. One would also expect to find negative coefficients for being female in each model, but that the advent of free schooling at the lower secondary level would attenuate the negative effect: As the direct cost of educating daughters fell, parents would be able to invest more evenhandedly in their children.

Governmental expenditures for education. The second indicator of governmental policy was the total recurrent dollar amount that the government spent for secondary schools. I deflated these expenditures to 1980 dollars to facilitate comparison. Table 3 lists the amount of recurrent spending, both in current Hong Kong dollars and in constant 1980 Hong Kong dollars.

Total spending, rather than per-pupil spending, is the relevant input in the model. Whereas per-pupil spending measures possible changes in the quality of schools, total spending measures the government's commitment to increase the number of pupils. Although MacLe- hose's policy was announced only in 1978, there had been gradual increases in secondary school spending since his arrival in Hong Kong in 1971, and even before then. I expected that the effect of spending, like the dummy variable for the year of the policy, would be significantly positive for the transition to lower secondary school. With more money available for more children, it should have been easier for a greater proportion of primary students to continue their studies at the lower secondary level. The likelihood of continuing should have risen, given more public support.

One would also expect to find a decline in the role of family resources, and thus a significantly negative interaction term of spending and father's income. In addition, one would anticipate a positive interaction with being female for the lower secondary level because public spending for girls would replace the need for parents to pay the direct costs of educating their daughters. How- ever, the effect of total secondary spend-

ing on students' persistence to the noncompulsory, fee-charging upper forms is more ambiguous. As selectivity de- creased for entrance to Form 1, selectivity might have increased for the transition from Form 3 to Form 4, and the role of family resources or gender might have actually increased.

Supply of publicly funded secondary school places. The third indicator of governmental policy was the supply of publicly funded secondary places. As governmental spending increased, a larger number of government-sponsored "free" places was created, both in Forms 1-3 (lower secondary) and in Forms 4-6 (upper secondary). Although the publicly supported places in the upper forms still charge some tuition, their fees are low in comparison with most private, entrepreneurial schools. For the transition from primary school to the lower secondary level, the relevant indicator of governmental policy was the proportion of poten- tially continuing students whose further education the government was willing to subsidize in publicly supported "free" places. Table 3 presents the total number of primary 6 students from 1968 through 1986 (including those who studied in private as well as publicly financed primary schools), the number who were able to continue the following year in publicly supported Form 1 places, and the percentage of potential lower secondary students who were thus accommodated by the government. It also shows the number of students who could continue from publicly supported slots in Form 3 to those in Form 4. The percentage of students who received these subsidized (though not free) places might be a determinant of the likelihood of continuing from Form 3 to Form 4 and that the interaction of the supply of upper secondary school (Form 4) places with family resources and gender might also be significant.

Nature of Cohort Effects At this point, something should be

said about the nature of cohort effects. Earlier studies showed that in Hong Kong, as elsewhere, family background effects on some school-transition probabilities declined in recent cohorts (Pong




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130 Post

and Post 1991; Post 1993). If the decline could be supposed to have been effected purely by the dimension of time, then an alternative specification to the use of policy indicators would be to interact family background and gender with the child's birth cohort. One problem with this strategy stems from the high corre- lation between greater governmental support and the year of birth: In every year, there have been increases in secondary spending and publicly supported places. A model incorporating both cohort effects and policy would be problematic because of multicollinearity between the two variables.

The difficulty with a focus on differ- ences among cohorts goes beyond technical concerns, however, for it supposes a "natural" expansion of education that cannot be explained by the increase in family resources or in the supply of governmental places. Some theorists have indeed argued for such a natural increase in the propensity to attend school, as a Weberian rationalization of knowledge became institutionalized throughout the world (Boli 1992; Ramirez and Ventresca 1992). This institutionaliza- tion may prevail in the larger historical perspective (Ramirez and Ventresca, for example, studied changes since 1830). However, the 15-year period under scru- tiny in this article contained few changes of the macrosociological type that under- gird world systems theory. In addition, the rationalization of knowledge and the central role of education, which have been constants in Chinese history at least since the Ming Dynasty, inspired some of Weber's original insights.

As a practical matter, models incorporating the dimension of time reveal little about the consequences of policy. Like estimates calculated separately by cohorts, they are useful for inferring trends in the effect of family background on school attainment. However, they show changes in the individual-level determinants of demand over a period when the supply of schooling was deliberately increased. Co- hort analyses thus offer only limited insight into how a government's expansion of free school places alters the likelihood of educational transitions and the effects of family resources or gender on transit-

ing. Therefore, how the effects of gender and family resources change must be examined not through time itself, but through the increased governmental provision of education.

RESULTS

To test the effect of public policy on the transition from primary 6 to secondary Form 1 and from Form 3 to Form 4, it was necessary to use the subsample of youths on whom I had information about family background (see Table 1). As reported by each census, most individuals aged 16-20 lived in households headed by a parent. However, something needs to be said about how a focus on these youths may have biased the results of the analysis.

Youths aged 16-20 who did not reside with their parents in nuclear families had lower educational attainments than did those who lived in such families. Figure 1 presents the proportions of primary 6 students in both groups who continued to Form 1 of lower secondary school and the proportions who transited from lower to upper secondary school (Form 3 to Form 4). Those whose parents were the household heads attained higher levels of education than did the smaller number who lived in households headed by other rel- atives or who lived independently. Un- fortunately, I have no information about the parents of the individuals who were not the sons or daughters of the heads of households (overall, about 20 percent of the total sample) and thus excluded them from the subsample when analyzing the trends in family background effects.

Although there was no basis for gener- alizing the findings to the population living independently, one ought not to assume that the results had no relevance for youths who were not the sons or daughters of the household heads. As many as half these youths (about 10 percent of the total sample) were the grandchildren, nieces, or nephews of the household heads. These young people usually lived with their parents, as well, but did so in an extended family that listed someone else-usually the oldest male-as the "household head." Notwith- standing the foregoing, the conclusions of this research must be restricted to




youths who were residing with their parents in nuclear families.

Table 4 presents the estimates resulting from the three alternative specifications of governmental policy in the models of continuation to lower- and upper secondary school. In the first model (A), a dummy variable for policy indicates whether the individual would have entered Form 1 of lower secondary school after Hong Kong's governor declared education to be a public responsibility and mandated free and compulsory education up to Form 3. The interaction effects of this indicator, both with the father's income and the student's sex, were calculated for continuation from Primary 6 to Form 11 of lower secondary school and then for persistence from Form 3 to Form 4 of secondary school, Model B uses constant governmental secondary school spending for the year the child would have entered Form 1 as an indicator of policy. The interactions of spending with father's income and student's sex were similarly calculated. Model C uses the availability of public places at each level to indicate governmental policy. It includes the interactions of father's income and gender with the supply of public Form 1 and Form

4 places for eligible matriculants in the primary 6 and Form 3 levels.

The main effects of public policy on the odds of continuing in school are largely consistent across all three models. Policy significantly increased the odds that children generally would continue from primary school to the lower secondary level. Models A and B show no significant effect of policy, however, for the transition to Form 4, and Model C even presents some evidence of a slight negative effect on the odds of continuing to this level. In part, the absence of effects or even negative effects at the subsequent level are the natural consequence of an expanded base of potential entrants to the upper secondary level.4 What is more notable is that

la. Continuing from primary 6 lb. Continuing from form 3 to lower secondary form 1 to upper secondary F4 1.0- 1.0

? O 0.9 0.9 0.

~~ ~0.8 0.8

0.0 0. 0.7

0.6 * 0.6 1976 1981 1986 1976 1981 1986

census year 0 -- children of household head

.o .... all others in 1 % sample Figure 1. Proportions of Youths Aged 16-20 Continuing to Forms 1 and 4, by Relation to

Household Head and Census Year

'In addition, and as a political consequence of increased public support for secondary education, Hong Kong industrialists feared that shortages of semiskilled workers would drive up wages. In the late 1970s, they succeeded in lobbying the government to expand apprenticeship and technical train- ing programs for Form 3 leavers. This re- moved students, especially boys, from the academic pipeline to upper secondary schools. Ironically, with the imminent return



132 Post

although selectivity by family resources and selectivity by gender were eliminated at the transition point to lower secondary school, they did not reassert themselves at the later juncture into the upper secondary level.

For the first transition, there are significant interaction terms, in the expected directions, between policy indicators and being female, as well as father's income. The coefficients for the interaction terms reveal that as a result of the new educational policy, children of high-income fathers were at less of an advantage than were previously compared children of low-income fathers in the relative odds of continuing to lower secondary school. Similarly, females became more likely to continue to lower secondary school with the advent of the MacLehose policy, increased subsidies, and the augmentation of free public places in Form 1. Although these findings are important, it is no less revealing that there was no increasing impact of income and gender in the continuation to Form 4: the interaction terms of policy with father's income and gender are insignificant.

The interpretation of the logistic regression coefficients can be facilitated by calculations of the predicted probabilities of continuing in school under vari- ous assumptions of father's income, governmental policy, and the student's sex.5 Under two different assumptions of

governmental support for secondary school, Figure 2 shows the predicted probabilities of continuation with re- spect to father's log income. Specifi- cally, it plots the likelihood of the two transitions depending on father's log income and the MacLehose mandate for free and universal lower secondary school education (Figure 2a), the amount of governmental spending for secondary school support when the child was aged 12 (Figure 2b), and the supply of public places in Form 1 during that year as a fraction of the potential demand (Figure 2c). Predicted values are plotted accord- ing to the supposition that the governmental policy was either that prevailing in 1968 or 1982. In 1968, individuals who were aged 20 in the 1976 census would have been aged 12 and would have been able to complete primary school and transit to secondary school. In 1982, individuals who were aged 16 in 1988 were aged 12.6

Assuming that there was no policy of publicly supported compulsory Form 1-3 education, then a child's continuation to Form 1 would have been partly determined by the income of the child's father. This determinant role is also evident in the calculations of the effects of spending and of the supply of publicly supported Form 1 places. On the other hand, the MacLehose mandate of 1978, like the more gradual increases in secondary spending and public supply during the 1970s, eliminated the role of of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997,

industrialists today are moving their opera- tions to southern China and its even cheaper labor force. At the same time, they are lobbying to scale down technical education in Hong Kong, since such education now produces workers with few job prospects (see Business and Professionals Federation 1993).

5 Logistic regression calculates the log odds ratio,

P L = log 1 _ X=l3

1-P

where P is the probability of continuing to the next level in the educational system. To obtain the predicted probabilities assuming different mean values for independent variables, one can calculate:

p__ 1

1 + exp (-Xir3)

Figures 2 and 3 were created by plugging in either the mean or conditional values of the explanatory variables, Xi and the estimates ,B from the logistic regression results.

6 The presentation and the logistic regression equation control for the greater likelihood of continuation in school because of increases in the absolute, not relative, amount of father's income. But, from a sociological perspective, a person's relative place in the contemporary distribution of income may be even more determinant. If one controls for the effect of relative position by standardiz- ing income in terms of standard deviations for each year, then the effect of policy appears even larger. Conceptualizing the effect of policy on absolute income is thus a conservative approach to estimating the consequences of governmental actions.




the father's income as a determining factor in a child's continuation to lower secondary school. For example, for the policy in effect in 1968, one would predict that children of fathers who earned one standard deviation below the mean income would be, on average, 0.15 less likely to continue to secondary school than would children whose fathers had incomes of one deviation above the mean. In contrast, for the policy in effect in 1982, father's earnings appear to be insignificant.

For the transition to upper secondary school, the effects of the MacLehose mandate, spending, and supply of publicly supported places do not produce significant changes in the slope of the effect of father's income, as may be seen in the non- significant interaction terms in the models of continuation in upper secondary school in Table 4. This finding is itself a noteworthy indication of the government's success in altering educational stratification by providing free lower secondary education. Of course, missing from the analysis is an examination of what happened at the postsecondary level, or res- tratification by the increasingly diverse quality of upper secondary schools.7

Table 4 demonstrates that in addition to affecting the role of family resources, governmental policies eliminated the negative effect of being female on the odds of continuing from primary 6 to Form 1 of lower secondary school. It is important to note that in the subsequent transition from lower to upper secondary school, girls were not correspond- ingly disadvantaged as a result of the educational policy and the greater participation of girls in the lower secondary level. In fact, the significantly positive coefficient for being female in model B (.32338) even suggests that girls might have maintained a slight advantage over boys in the transition to upper secondary school.

With the policy in effect in 1968, girls would have been less likely than boys to continue to Form 1. In contrast, given the supply of free places, governmental subsidy, and legislated universality that prevailed in 1982, girls became more likely than boys to enter lower secondary school. Figure 3 presents the predicted probabilities of continuing for each sex, assuming different educational policies. Regardless of the way the

2a. MacLehose mandate for 2b. Government spending 2c. Supply of form 1 places universal education to F3 for secondary schools in publicly-supported schools

_ 1.00- 1.00 1.00 _C MacLehose places for 77%

C i; 0.95 1978 policy 0.95- recurrent 0.95| (1982 level) _CC government0.5 (92lv) c +-a ~~~~~~~~~~spending at

O (D 0.90- 0.90 1982 levels 0.90/

o4- 0.85- 0.85- 0.85-

0 0.80- 0.80- recurrent 0.80-

t O / no policy of / government Fl public places I) 0 0.75~ free&compulsof spending at available only for n 0.75 free & compulsory 0.75 1968 levels 0.75- 16% of pnmary 6 2 C form 3 education leavers (1968 level)

0.70 ' 0.70 1 1 0.70 1 . -2 -1 Mean 1 2 -2 -1 Mean 1 2 -2 -1 Mean 1 2

father's log income in standard deviations Figure 2. Effects of Three Public Policy Indicators on Continuation to Form 1, by Father's

Income

7 When upper secondary schools became less selective on the basis of family resources and gender, it is likely that university education in Hong Kong became more so, as

indicated in footnote 1. However, the question of university transitions is difficult to examine because the census data give no indication of the changing access of Hong Kong youths to overseas universities.



134 Post

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policy is specified, it can be seen that girls would overtake boys with the policy that was in effect in 1982.

When Hong Kong parents were forced to choose, they apparently preferred to educate their sons. However, increasing the supply of free education gave girls an advantage, perhaps because of the types of employment opportunities that were available to children during the 1970s. By enforcing child labor laws and universalizing lower secondary education, the government hastened the demise of the home-craft and piecework industries-activities that once represented a major source of family income in Hong Kong and that were performed over- whelmingly by girls. But, outside the home, there were fewer semiskilled jobs available for girls than for boys. 'I'hus, with home industry eliminated, manual labor remained the most viable alternative, and these jobs would have been more likely to attract boys than girls. To the extent that one believes that receiv- ing a secondary education is socially desirable, the main beneficiaries of free education in Hong Kong have been girls, especially from poorer backgrounds.

DISCUSSION

Hong Kong deliberately expanded the educational participation rates of its children by sponsoring ever-greater num- bers of free places in the lower secon-

dary schools, mandating the universality of lower secondary education, and matching its policy with funds. One result has been a significant transformation of the colony's educational stratification. Ulti- mately, public sponsorship may result in a trend of more equal opportunities for social mobility, although in this regard, the usual caveats about creden- tial inflation need to be considered. As a result of abandoning fees, girls became more likely to persist in school and even to overtake boys. This persistence in school is certain to have an impact on future marital and fertility patterns, aside from the more obvious effect on wom- en's labor force participation and earnings. For boys as well as girls, the governmental policy has attenuated the effects of father's income on the likelihood of obtaining lower secondary schooling. The reduced selectively at the transition point to Form 1, it is important to note, did not coincide with increased effects of either family background or gender in the subsequent transition to the upper secondary level. This finding implies a genuine transformation of Hong Kong's educational stratification.

The findings of this research contribute in three ways to the sociology of education, not only in the rapidly grow- ing newly industrializing economies of Asia, but elsewhere. First, the example of Hong Kong suggests empirical ap-

3a. MacLehose mandate for 3b. Government spending 3c. Supply of Form 1 places universal education to F3 for secondary schools In publicly-supported schools

0) 1.00 1.00- girls girls

c a) ~~ 0.95 >~~ o 0 0.95- 0.95-

o0.90 .- 0.90 0.90-

0c

0. 0.0 V0.80 . 0.80 without assuming 200 500 800 1100 0.15 0.35 0.55 0.75

free free recurrent expenditures proportion of demand school school in millions of 1980 HK$ filled in free schools

Figure 3. Effects of Three Public Policy Indicators on Continuation to Form 1, by Sex



136 Post

proaches to the investigation of policies in countries where strong central governments regulate the supply of schooling. In the literature on stratification in decentralized, or demand-led, educational systems, of which the United States is the prime example, it is difficult, if not impossible, to assume the primacy of governments in altering children's access to school, nor are there many summary indicators of state action. However, the case of Hong Kong suggests approaches to state action that could be applied elsewhere in the Asian Pacific Rim. Second, the methods of this study depart from an assumption that has underlaid much previous research. By focusing on state policy, as opposed to cohort effects, time, or other secular world systemic changes, the methods reported here can help link research in the sociology of school expansion to investigations of educational stratification. Third, from a macrosociological perspective, focusing on state policy returns the study of educational attainment to a core research problem of the discipline: How does state regulation of children's access to schools affect children's life chances?

Sorokin (1927/1954:97) proposed that stratification was a constant throughout history; however, he also thought that the channels of mobility could change under certain conditions. Implicitly, he envisioned that the autonomous public control of education could result in reduced effects of status origins on attainment as the system became freer from the pressures and demands of higher-status groups (Bidwell and Fried- kin 1988). Sorokin's contribution thus implied a necessary linkage between the study of the declining effect of individual status origin in stratification systems, on the one hand, with corollary research on the rising institutional autonomy of state-sponsored schooling, on the other hand. American sociology, for understandable reasons, has focused less attention on the institutional than on the individual side of the agenda. Theories of labor economists have offered hypoth- eses about the determinants of children's participation in the labor force versus their attendance at school, and

demographic methods have been brought to bear on the appropriate statistical modeling of students' educational attainment. Empirical investigations have found that the microlevel determinants of school attainment often change over time-that they are, in a word, "muta- ble" (Mare 1981: 72). Thus, in the burgeoning research literature, trends are variously observed-or found ab- sent-in the effects of family background, gender, and ethnicity on such things as the years of schooling completed, on the likelihood of academic track assignment, or on the probability of transition from one level to another of the system.

Yet, what does this literature imply for the institutions that presumably have supplied the education that individuals have attained? To what degree has the autonomous governance of educational selection been responsible? Put another way, should research on the changing role of status origins in educational or occupational destinations be regarded as part of a demographic or a public policy research program? Because it is clearly both, the study of educational opportunity should, whenever possible, incorpo- rate the public supply, as well as private demand, factors that affect both educational expansion and educational stratification.

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138 Post

David Post, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Comparative Education, Department of Educational Policy Studies, Pennsylvania State University, University Park. His main fields of interest are comparative education and higher education policy. He is currently conducting a study of children's welfare, work, and school participation in Chile, Peru, and Mexico during the past decade and is writing a book on the social consequences of state-led school expansion in Hong Kong.

The author is grateful to Yue-ping Chung, Estelle James, Suet-ling Pong, Tony Tam, Raymond Wong, and Richard Wong for their suggestions and comments on earlier versions of this article. Address all correspondence to Dr. David Post, 315 Rackely Building, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802.



Documents

Educational Stratification, School Expansion, and Public Policy in Hong Kong