Calculating Path Coefficients
Message posted by Mike Beers on October 21, 1999 at 12:00 AM (ET)

I'm trying to update a status attainment model that evaluates the direct and indirect influences of Father's Education, Father's Occupation, Son's Education, and Son's First Job on Son's Occupation. I have data from the the General Social Survey.

Here are the paths:
Father's Ed to Father's Occ (and vice versa)
Father's Ed to Son's Ed
Father's Occ to Son's First Job
Father's Occ to Son's Ed
Father's Occ to Son's Occ
Son's Ed to Son's First Job
Son's Ed to Son's Occ
Son's First Job to Son's Occ

Father's Occ and Ed are exogenous. This leaves me with three reduced form equations.

My problem is that after I run the first regression of Son's Ed on Father's Ed, I don't know how to proceed any further. In the next equation, where I solve for Son's First Job, the equation is something like:
FirstJob =(b1 + a2b2) Dad'sOcc + b2a1 Dad'sEd + b2e1 + e2
where b1 is the path coefficient from Father's Occ to FirstJob, a2 from Father's Occ to Son's Ed, b2 from Son's Ed to FirstJob, and a1 from Father's Ed to Son's Ed.

If anyone is still with me--my writing can be a bit opaque--I have values for a1, a2, and e1. What's the next step?

Thanks very much.

Mike Beers

READERS RESPOND:
(In chronological order. Most recent at the bottom.)

Re: Calculating Path Coefficients
Message posted by Bill on October 21, 1999 at 12:00 AM (ET)

Re: Calculating Path Coefficients
Message posted by jg on October 21, 1999 at 12:00 AM (ET)

Re: Calculating Path Coefficients
Message posted by jg on October 21, 1999 at 12:00 AM (ET)

Re: Status Attainment Model & Path Analysis
Message posted by Mike Beers on October 22, 1999 at 12:00 AM (ET)

Let's say you want to understand why some people end as investment bankers and other people end up as shoe shiners. The logic would be as follows: For a given individual, get information on his occupation, his education, his parents' education, his parents' occupations, and, in this case, the individual's first job. Clearly, there is a relationship between an individual's education and his occupation; so too, however, will parents' occupations affect an individual's occupation. Moreover, and this is the key to path analysis, parents' occupations also affect the individual's education. So, you have parents' occupations both having a direct effect on the individual's occupation as well as an indirect effect on it, through education.

If you draw a path diagram

IndEduc
^ -
- -
- >
IndOcc
ParentOccs ------------>

The path coefficients are those that represent the relationship between each variable.

Mike