In this chapter we shall provide several examples, increasingly complex and instructive, of the use of life-table logic in the study of social statuses and social organizations. An SPSS (1983) subroutine called SURVIVAL will be used for part of this analysis, although in some instances it may be necessary to go beyond the current capabilities of that impressive program. For the final example, involving survivorship of marital units, it will be shown in some detail that what Davis calls the “method of covariation” is readily applied to questions about ways in which structural conditions influence the survivorship of social organizations.

Years in school

Stockwell and Nam (1963) have prepared a series of “double decrement” life tables to estimate life expectancies of young Americans in the role of student. Such tables show the impact of both mortality and the school dropout rate on enrollment expectations, and clearly reflect the substantial increase in the holding power of schools during the fifties. The average number of school years remaining to Americans alive at a given age is shown in Table 3.1. Stockwell and Nam (1963:1124) point out the utility of life-table methods in assessing the impact of various social characteristics on school enrollment expectations: