Ruud Luijkx, Róbert Péter, Paul M. De Graaf, Hany B. G. Ganzeboom
From Ascription to Achievement:
The Status-Attaiment Process in Hungary

The goal of this paper is to study the status attainment process in Hungary. Using data from four large-scale nation-wide representative surveys, we analyze the job histories of about 40,000 men between 1910 and 1991. We focuse on the effect of two main determinants of status attainment process: achievement and ascription, measured by respondent's educational level and father's occupation. Our main interest is to analyze how the influence of these two variables on status attainment varies over historical times and over the life course. The main hypothesis of the research is based on the industrialization theory assuming that the impact of achievement becomes larger and that of ascription becomes smaller over time. The other hypothesis is based on life-course theory assuming that both educational credentials and ascriptive features of social origin are replaced by other abilities and capitals collected and accumulated during the life course.

We approach the research problem in two steps. First, we calcutate descriptive statistics, change of average educational level, occupational attainment and social origin as well as the zero-order correlations between education and occupation just as between father's occupation and respondent's occupation for selected historical years by birth cohorts. Second, we estimate logistic regression models on status gains and status losses during the career and analyze the unconditioned effect of time and age, that of education and father's occupation, as well as the changes of the impact of achievement and ascription over time and age. The analysis on career transitions in upward and downward direction is based on using a discrete time event history model on a person-period file.

Both descriptive statistics and estimates from causal models on upward and downward mobility confirm the hypothesis on age effect. As expected, the influence of education and that of father's occupation declines over age and as getting older these determinants tend to play a smaller role in the status attainment process. Our results basically confirm the industrialization hypothesis, too. We found the increasing trend for achievement and the decreasing trend for ascription, however, for both trends we found a reversal, both trends started to turn back to some extent after the mid-1980s.
 

Lengyel, György
On the East European Sociology of Economics:
Problems and Challenges

The paper investigates some hidden trends in East-Central European economic sociology and the recent challenges they have to face with. It argues that Western economic sociology is "paradigm-oriented", while these kind of researches are "problem-orinted" in East-Central Europe. Social facts don't have simple illustrative fuction in their case. Their primary aim is invariably to understand, describe and explain relevant social aspects of econimic life: the nature of institutional changes, the recruitment, motives and attitudes of old and new economic actors. Most of these disperse researches are empirically established, sensitive, but underconceptualized attempts. Therefore their contribution to the recent paradigms is relatively weak, but they provide sets of provocative questions and may help to find the lost sociological imagination.
 

Harsányi, János
The Theory of Rational Behaviour

János Harsányi, the 1994 Nobel laureate in economics was born and lived in Hungary until 1948, when he fled from the country amidst adventurous conditions. Prior to his escape he worked as a social scientist together with László Cseh-Szombathy and Géza Perjés in Sándor Szalay's institute.

In spring this year he came to Hungary and held a lecture for the interested public. In this paper he summaries the more important findings of the theories of games, bargaining and usefulness and his achievements accomplished in these fields of science for those who are not familiar with his field of research.
 

Molnár, Attila
Is the Wrong Way of Life of Expectant Mothers the Cause of Small Weight?

The paper analyses the causes of the evolution of small weight and partly some of its consequences. It attempts to exp!ore those endangering factors which may lead to an irregular outcome of pregnancy. It wishes to call attention to the greatness of the expectant mother's responsibility by the calculation and presentation of the ratio of chance belonging to the individual endangering factors based on a sample. Though the most important person is the expectant mother herself, the influence of her close environment - such as the family - and the broader society, including the place of work, cannot be disregarded either.

During the course of the study which is the basis of the paprs, 6848 mothers were questioned right after giving birth and we have reached the results published in the paper after the analysis of their answers.

According to our experience the most harmful endangering factor is the active and passive smoking of expectant mothers and their heavy physical work. How a person's conditions of work would change and how he or she shapes his or her life, primarily depends on school education, but marital ststus has a decisive role in the case of women.
 

Kovács, Katalin-Váradi, Monika Mária
Actors and Systems of Relations in the Agrarian Economy of an Agricultural Market Town of the Plain

The paper presents the actors and the newly recreated sets of relations of the agrarian economy of an agricultural market town of the Plain. The actors are a large state factory, two co-operatíves, one working in a traditional way and one in the form of a holding; medium size factories organised as limited companies; co-operations based on the commonality of ownership; enterprises of gardening, animal husbandry and Alant production, having a mixed cultivation or offering mechanised services; finally a few thousand small producers, the new landowners - this agrarian society is an articulated one and rich in actors. Relationship among the actors is characterised by conflict and almost by fighting. Struggle has crossed over the professional boundaries of interest representation and has been going on in the arena of local politocs and not only for better markel positions and/or for retaining the already acquired positions: Land, having a symbolic value besides the real one, is at stake, together with the legitimation of the possession andlor use of implements, which would be accompained by making the set of oriteria of local validity accapted. At the same time no group of the actors is able to force out the others from competition for a long time and thus prove that it has 'more right' to the ownership of land and the other means of production than its rivals, and thus a larger respect would justly surround them in local public life. Apparently the position and strength of interest representetion of the different groups are balanced. At the same time this society despite all conflict - is characterised by a kind of common tolerance based on experience, or, with some exaggeration on fate; here everybody knows what does it mean to 'trouble with and work along' with land.
 

Nagy, Beáta
Businesswomen and Businessmen Female and Male
Enterpreneurs in the early 90s

The number of enterprises are increasing all over Europe. This increase is due to women's growing inclination to launch on an enterprise. Although this is an important factor, it has been fairly disregarded up till now in our region. Much attention has been paid to the appearance of female enterpreneurs in the last decades in market economies. It is not so much the case in Hungary.

After displaying the new patterns of the female employment in Western-Europe the paper compares the similarities and differences between Hungarian female enterpreneurs and on the one hand Western-Europe female entrepreneurs, and on the other Hungarian male entrepreneurs and their enterprises.

The analysis is based on a random sample of Hungarian small entrepreneurs. The survey was carried out in the late 1993. The main questions are focused on the following subjects: relationship between entrepreneurship and unemployment, motivations of women and man to set up and enterprise, the relation of schooling and entrepreneurial motives, the combination of family and work, the segregation of male and female entrepeneurial fields, discrepancy in earnings of female and male entrepreneurs.