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Behavioral problems and depression are correlated with educational outcomes. The existing literature usually focuses on a unidirectional effect pathway from behavior problems or depression to educational outcomes, and often neglects the gender differences in their relationships and the concrete mechanisms linking educational outcomes to behavioral problems or depression. To fill these gaps, this dissertation examines behavioral problems, depression, and their reciprocal relationships with educational outcomes. China, the largest education system in the world, is used as a case study. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is employed to analyze data from three large-scale and longitudinal datasets: the China Family Panel Studies, the China Education Panel Survey, and the Gansu Survey of Children and Families. Results confirm that both behavioral problems and depression have reciprocal relationships with educational outcomes. For behavioral problems, this dissertation focuses on externalizing problems and finds that externalizing problems and educational achievement can negatively affect each other, but such a reciprocal relationship only exists between externalizing problems and language achievement, not math achievement. In the long term, externalizing problems and educational achievement through each other have statistically significant effects on children’s educational attainment, although such effects are minimal in effect size. Regarding depression, it has negative and reciprocal relationships with both educational achievement and educational attainment. In particular, higher educational achievement lowers the level of subsequent depression by resulting in less peers’ unfriendliness, less pressure from parents’ expectations, and less teachers’ criticism. Moreover, there are gender differences in the association between depression and educational achievement. Girls have higher educational achievement and higher depression levels, but also have a stronger negative as

Sociology has largely ignored class differences between American religious groups under the assumption that those differences “are smaller than they used to be and are getting smaller all of the time” (Pyle & Davidson, 2014, p. 195). This article demonstrates that profound class differences remain amongst American religious groups. These differences are as large as—or larger than—commonly examined forms of inequality such as the gender pay gap and the race achievement gap. Using the most popular categorization of American religious groups, we find that regardless of the particular measure examined (years of education, income, socioeconomic index score, and proportion of members with at least a bachelor’s degree) Jews and Mainline Protestants are at the top of the socioeconomic ladder and Evangelical Protestants, both black and white, are at the bottom. Furthermore, religious group significantly predicts both years of education and the overall socioeconomic standing of respondents by itself with basic controls. Likewise, both socioeconomic indicators and education significantly predict the likelihood of being in a specific religious tradition on their own with basic controls. Some religious groups, namely Evangelical Protestants at the low end and Jews and the high end, are relatively educationally homogeneous. Others, such as Catholics, Mainline Protestants and the nonreligious are much more educationally heterogeneous. The picture is the same when socioeconomic heterogeneity is examined, except that Mainline Protestants emerge as more clearly advantaged socioeconomically. In sum, religious inequality remains in America, it is robust, and it appears to be quite durable.