What does it takes to be a successful person in Bulgaria?
Free University Berlin, Master Programme Sociology – European Societies Seminar: Does it Matter What the People Think? Material Inequalities and Their Legitimation in Modern Welfare States. Course leader: MA Uwe Ruß
Author: Plamen Akaliyski, Student ID: 4584918, Email: [email protected]
Data of submission: 24.09.2012
Abstract
Topic of this seminar paper is answering the question “what it takes to be a successful person in Bulgaria?” as well as “which groups of the societies are disadvantaged and will be prone to seek a better life abroad?”. Social inequality survey from ISSP 2009 is used to compare what people believe are the most important factors for getting ahead in their country. Results are compared to the ideal case of a meritocratic state and other countries from the data set. Findings provide some evidence that Bulgaria is a meritocratic society, namely that ambition, hard-work and education are the most relevant factors for success. Nevertheless other non-meritocratic factors have a very high importance according to much larger part of Bulgarians compared to the rest of the world. The largest disparity is in the significance of social capital in Bulgaria, but also in growing up in a wealthy filmily and giving bribes. All these differences are likely to have demoralising effect on the disadvantaged parts of the society and are a potential reason for emigration. A positive signal comes from a regression analysis which proves that education has a much higher influence on person’s income, while coming from a high status family is insignificant. Therefore, education is a potential path for succeeding individual’s ambitions. However, while most people believe that everyone has equal chances to get a place at university, nearly half of the respondents think that only the rich can afford the costs of obtaining higher education. The conclusion made is that a large part of the population is disadvantaged with regard to their chances for success which turns them into potential emigrants. On the other hand, there are still opportunities for people to achieve their goals in Bulgaria if they have enough ambition, work hard and are able to make social connections.
1 | P a g e Table of content
1. Table of content…………………………….…..….2 2. Introduction………………………………….….…3 3. Theory. What is meritocracy?.....………………….3 4. What are the main factors for getting ahead in Bulgaria?...... …..4 5. Bulgaria compared to other countries……………..5 6. Education vs. Family status………………………..7 7. Equal opportunities for education?.....…………….8 8. Conclusions………………………………………..9 9. Appendix………………………….……………...11 10.References………………………………………..12
2 | P a g e Introduction
In the last 22 years the population of Bulgaria is dramatically decreasing. A great deal of this is caused by a huge wave of emigration towards wealthier Western European and North American countries. A recent study made by the national labour confederation in Bulgaria uncovers that since the collapse of the communist rule between 1.2 and 1.6 million people have left their homeland in search for better life abroadi. According to the same studyii 34.88% of the population in 2012 have firmly decided to move abroad or would do it if they have the opportunity. The factors motivating those attitudes are predominantly of economic nature. Low salary is the reason for 83.31% of the respondents, insecurity on the work place for 47.93%1 of them and 34.61% are motivated from lack of employment opportunities. Despite that the GDP per capita in Bulgaria is only 45% of the EU averageiii, there is a significant inequality in income distribution within the country. Therefore there are people who manage well financially despite of the general economic hardship in the state, while others find their financial situation unbearable. The goal of this seminar paper is to find out what are the determining factors for some people to be more successful than others. With regard to meritocracy those factors will be divided into fair-play factors such as hard work, education and ambition and ascribed (or unfair) factors such as growing up in a wealthy family, knowing the right people, giving bribes, and all other which are not present by personal choice and effort but rather inherited such as gender, ethnicity and religious affiliation. Data from a survey on social inequality will be analysed in order to identify which factors people believe are the strongest determinants of becoming successful in Bulgaria. Findings will be compared to the ideal case of a meritocratic state and to other Western European country which are often idealised in Bulgaria as “best examples” as well as to all other countries from the sample. In this way it will be discovered whether objective reasons for emigration exist or those reasons could be found somewhere else. Theory. What is meritocracy?
By meritocracy it is usually meant a society where positions are achieved on the basis of personal merit. Its ideologist Michael Young describes it as: “a society that is governed or led by the best and brightest, and in which opportunities in education, employment, civil society, political office, and so on, are made available purely on the basis of talent and achievement”iv. From this description it is clear that a position in society which is ascribed or inherited on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, affluence of family where grown up etc. are not meritocratically achieved. Even though meritocracy has become a dominant ideology in the advanced countries, it is reasonable that we have doubts such a “fair-play” society could be implemented completely in reality. The above description serves as rather ideal case with which Bulgaria is going to be compared. Meritocracy as an ideology is being criticised for its imperfection even by its authorv half a century after publishing his book “The Rise of the Meritocracy”. According to Tannackvi it can deteriorate into education-based discrimination which creates “educationally-defined” second class in the society. The system becomes problematic because of the unequally distributed opportunities for obtaining education. Since the main question in this seminar paper is
1 The total percentage is higher than 100 because respondents could point out more than one reason.
3 | P a g e to identify whether people have equal chances for success in Bulgaria, an accent will be put on discovering to what extend people have equal opportunities with regard to getting education. What are the main factors for getting ahead in Bulgaria?
In this analysis data from ISSP 2009vii is used. In order to identify what respondents find the main factors for advancing in life are, they are asked the question: To begin we have some questions about opportunities for getting ahead. Please tick one box for each of these to show how important you think it is for getting ahead in life. Respondents were given the opportunity to grade how important is for them each of the 15 proposed factors on 5 points scale: 1 Essential; 2 Very important; 3 Fairly important; 4 Not very important; 5 Not important at all. For making the results visibly more clear on graph 1 is shown the aggregate percentage of the answers of Bulgarian respondents for Essential and Very important only.
Graph 1. Factors for getting ahead
The picture portrayed on the graph is surprisingly interesting. The top 3 factors for getting ahead which respondents declared were all of meritocratic nature. More than 80% of them state that being ambitious, working hard and obtaining a good education are the most relevant characteristics of the successful people in Bulgaria. Knowing the write people comes on 4th position with 71.8% but it could be argued to which group this factor belongs. It might be that a person knows “the right people” because of his family or that it is due to personal characteristics and skills in making social connections. Of medium importance are 2 inherited characteristics: having well-educated parents and coming from wealthy family; and also another factor of having good connections - with people in political organisations and institutions. Four factors are of the minor importance: giving bribes which could be added to the non- meritocratic ones; and 3 typically inherited features: race, gender and religion. It is surprising that 17.8 % of the people define person’s race as essential or very important because the percentage of people belonging to another race in Bulgaria is significantly below 1. As said earlier, those results could be compared to the ideal case of meritocracy. It is positive to find out that the top 3 factors are all meritocratic, however it should be noted that all other inherited or unfair factors are nevertheless very important according to a large share of the population. A better perspective will be given when those results are compared to other countries from the survey. Bulgaria compared to other countries
On graph 2 it is demonstrated where Bulgarian respondents score compared to the mean results from other countries. Because this analysis serves on explaining the phenomenon of emigration, the countries chosen for the comparison are the most
4 | P a g e desired places for those who want to leave Bulgaria for seeking a better life and having more opportunities: USA, Germany, Great Britain, Spain and Australia2.
Graph 2. Factors for getting ahead: Bulgaria (in colours) compared to the total average of USA, Germany, Great Britain, Spain and Australia (in grey)
The pattern in the other 5 countries resembles the one in Bulgaria, but nevertheless there are significant disparities in some of the categories. While the top 3 factors, which are the meritocratic ones, remain the same and have nearly the same values, there is more significant difference in the non-meritocratic factors. The largest disparity is on social capital factors such as knowing the right people (24.1% difference) and having political connections (23.1%). Bulgarian respondents report much more often that coming from wealthy family and giving brides are very important, but the other non-meritocratic factors are also much more often seen as vital for getting ahead. According to the results in Bulgaria the problem of discrimination on the basis of gender, race and religion is more significant. Another opportunity to discover the real situation in Bulgaria is to compare it not only with the idealised cases but with all 37 other countries from the sample3. It is important to mention that these are not randomly selected countries but they are mainly European and other developed non-European countries.
Graph 3. Factors for getting ahead: Bulgaria (in colours) compared to the mean percentages for 37 other countries (in grey)
The positive result of the comparison for Bulgaria is that the 3 meritocratic factors seem to be more important for becoming successful. Factors of social capital again prove to be more significant for getting ahead for Bulgarian respondents than the average for the rest of the countries. The results for these factors for Bulgarians are more similar to other Eastern European countries and only 5 countries report more often that knowing the right people is very important – China, South Korea, Turkey and Poland. The figures for other Western European and English-speaking countries plus Japan are much lower. Exceptions are only Germany and Austria which score nearly as high as Bulgaria. Coming from a wealthy family and having well-educated parents is again considered less significant for success for other countries compared to Bulgaria. Discrimination on the basis of race, gender and religion has nearly equal significance for respondents from Bulgaria and sample’s average. Giving bribes again stand as a real issue for getting ahead in Bulgaria – more than twice higher than the average.
2 All countries are: Canada, Greece and Turkey are also among the top destinations but Canada and Greece were not included in the data set and Turkey is not included in the analysis because the motives for emigrating there are not so much of economic character but political instead. 3 Argentina, Australia, Austria, Flanders, Wallony, Chile, China, Taiwan, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany-West, Germany-East, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Latvia, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Great Britain and United States
5 | P a g e Education vs. Family status
The above comparisons give a good insight of the perceptions of the people about what they think is of highest relevance for getting ahead. Those are, however, subjective indicators which could differ from reality. Therefore it is important to see if those factors really have an impact on getting ahead and - most importantly - how it affects their income. A regression analysis is used in order to compare the strength of the factors on earnings. Unfortunately questions for hard work are asked only for half of the countries in the data set and Bulgaria is not among them and there are no questions which could capture the idea of “being ambitious”. The only meritocratic factor which can be used in this analysis is education. It is compared to the non- meritocratic factor of having grown up in a high status family (for description of variables, please see Appendix). Control variables of age, gender and religion are used.
Table 1. OLS regression analysis. Dependent variable: monthly earnings. Model 1 Model 2 Education 80.8 (0.176)*** 56.1 (0.121)** Family's status 27.8 (0.063) 26.3 (0.06)
Control variables: Gender -167.3 (-0.113)*** Age -10.8 (-0.249)*** Religion 53.4 (0.027)
Number of observations 591 550 R-squared 0.0429 0.1172 Adjusted R-squared 0.0396 0.1091
*P≤0.10, **P≤0.05, ***P≤0.01 Standardised coefficients are presented in the brackets.
The regression analysis demonstrates that education is much stronger determinant of earnings in Bulgaria. With increase of the educational level with one step on an 8 point scale the monthly salary grows with 80.8 levs (€40) in model 1 or 56.1 levs in the second model. The status of the family where respondent grew up increases the probability of someone earning more money with 27.8 (26.3) levs for each change in status with one unit on a 10 point scale. However, the coefficient for this variable lacks statistical significance in both models; therefore it cannot be proven that it has the proposed direction. Gender and age both have significant and rather strong coefficients. The analysis shows that women earn on average 167.3 levs less than men per month. Rather abnormal finding compared to the western countries is that older people earn significantly less money than the younger. Penka Kovachevaviii explains this phenomenon with the lack of importance for work experience gained before 1990. To this point could be added that Bulgarian pensioners are not among the privileged parts of society with regard to wealth redistribution. It is suggested that Muslim respondents earn on average 53.4 levs more but the coefficient is very
6 | P a g e insignificant; therefore we exclude the probability that there is correlation between religious denomination and income in Bulgaria. The findings support to some extend the respondents opinion and mainly that education is among the most important determinants of being successful, while coming from a wealthy family and religious denomination have minor or no relevance for respondents’ earnings.
Equal Opportunities for Education?
Since “having a good education yourself” proves to have a major significance for getting ahead in Bulgaria according to respondents opinion and by the regression analysis, the next step is to identify to which extent individuals have equal chances to obtain education in Bulgaria.
Graph 4. In
On graph 4 the opinion of Bulgarian respondents is compared again with the same groups of countries. A positive conclusion is that most respondents in Bulgaria, and this is significantly higher percentage than in the rest of the countries, report that everyone has an equal chance to get a place at university. The question includes also social background which gives a strong indication that Bulgaria could be ascribed to the meritocratic societies.
Graph 5. In
On the other hand, in Bulgaria people believe much more often that education is a privilege of the rich people because the poor are not able to afford the costs related to it. The difference is much more significant with the 5 countries where most Bulgarian emigrants move to. Conclusion
This seminar paper examines the strength of different factors which have relevance for people to get ahead in Bulgaria and being well-off. It starts with a disturbing description of attitudes of people about emigration for economic reasons. From there it was suggested that people make the choice to move abroad because of lack of opportunities for becoming successful in the homeland due to unfair (non-
7 | P a g e meritocratic) competition. Most important factors for getting ahead were identified by using ISSP 2009 data set and the findings were compared to other countries. Factors which could be described as meritocratic such as having ambition, working hard and having a good education were most often reported as very important. The rest of the factors, which are non-meritocratic, were less often reported but nevertheless were still significantly above the countries which serve as models for Bulgarians. The regression analysis uncovers that education of the respondent is much more relevant factor than having grown up in a wealthy family but also age and gender have significant influence on person’s income. Respondents draw a mixed picture with regard to equality of opportunities for getting education. While most people believe that everyone can get a place at university, they don’t believe that poor people are able to afford it. Therefore there is some evidence that Bulgaria is a meritocratic state which means that people’s success is a result of their hard-work, talent and ambition. On the other hand there are often other obstacles which people cannot ignore. By comparing with other countries we found that the most significant difference is the importance of social capital for success in Bulgaria. What is more, people with the “wrong” gender, age, religion and race often feel disadvantaged with regard to opportunities for getting ahead. A rather demoralising effect is likely to have the very high importance of giving bribes in order to get ahead. For that reason we can conclude that people who don’t have the necessary social and political connections will be more often willing to move abroad where it is believed that they will have more equal chances to achieve their goals in life. To the category of potential emigrants can be attached people with higher moral values which won’t be susceptible to giving bribes or taking advantage of their political connections. Individuals who have made their choice to remain in the country are either among those who have better chances due to their family background and opportunities for getting good education or who have above average ambition, willingness to work hard and ability to build social network on their own.
8 | P a g e Appendix
Dependent variable: Earnings – Monthly Personal Income in Bulgarian levs.
Independent variables: Education – highest education level. Range: 1 None; 2 Primary and basic education; 3 Lower secondary; 4 Upper secondary; 5 Secondary technical; 6 College, 2 to 4 years; 7 Higher education, university; 8 University degree Family’s status – original question asked: In our society there are groups which tend to be towards the top and groups which tend to be towards the bottom. Below is a scale that runs from top to bottom. And if you think about the family that you grew up in, where did they fit in then?
Control variables: Age – age of the respondent Gender – respondent’s gender: 1 male, 2 female Religion – religious denomination of the respondent: 1 Orthodox, 2 Muslim, all others are omitted
9 | P a g e 10 | P a g e iReferences
Dr. Konstantin Trenchev (2012), The Bulgarians who have left their homeland during the transition are 1.2-1.6 millions, many are ready to follow them (in Bulgarian, translation mine), TV Evropa onlune. Available from: http://www.tvevropa.com/bg/news/bulgaria/view/75192 ii Prof. Duhomir Minev (2012), Labour migration – attitudes, motives and problems of the Bulgarian workers (in Bulgarian, translation mine). Available at: http://www.tuk-tam.bg/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/%D0%94.-%D0%9C %D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B2.pdf iii Eurostat Newsrelease (June 2012) iv Young, Michael (1958), The Rise of the Meritocracy v Young, Michael (2001), Down with Meritocracy. The Guardian. Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment vi Stuart Tannack (2008), The problem of education-based discrimination. British Journal of Sociology &Education,Vol. 20, No. 5, 439-449 vii International Social Survey Programme: Social Inequality IV viii Kovacheva, Penka (2011), Human capital and wage inequality during transition: evidence from Bulgaria