| The main concern of the dissertation is the issue of social inequality, especially the impact of modernization on occupational income inequality at both national and state levels in the United States during the 1950-80 period. Within the modernization model, two questions are prominent: (a) whether there has been a narrowing trend of occupational income inequality in the light of economic growth and social and political changes in modern nations; (b) whether occupational income inequality is explained more by the institutional or the market-individualistic perspectives.;Data were obtained from the U.S. Census and other relevant publicly and privately published documents for the period under study. The Cox-Stuart test and multiple regression technique were employed to examine the trend of occupational income inequality and the impact of modernization variables derived from the market-individualistic and the institutional perspectives on occupational income inequality respectively.;The findings of the Cox-Stuart test reveal that there was no significant narrowing trend of occupational income inequality at the national level during the 1947-79 period. The multiple regression analysis indicate that each set of the modernization variables--four market-individualistic (i.e., economic growth, industrialization, educational expansion, and business cycle) and three institutional (i.e., party competition, government policies, and collective bargaining)--explained significantly about the same amount of the variance of occupational income inequality in the American states in the 1950-80 decennial period. However, their explanatory power, either collectively or individually, diminished consistently over time.;The general implications of the findings are as follows: (a) It casts doubt on the validity of the theoretical statements derived from previous studies that have focused only on a single time period to assess the impact of political and socio-economic variables on income inequality. (b) It raises a question about the underlying assumptions associated with the institutional and the market-individualistic perspectives. |
