This dissertation consists of three studies on world culture and the individual life course. The first study (Chapter 2) accesses the grassroots-level prevalence of world culture’s schema of national development.Using survey data from the Developmental Idealism project, I find substantial similarities among the national developmental hierarchies constructed by respondents in eight culturally diverse countries, which strongly conform to the versions based on the United Nations’ Human Development Index.Furthermore, such conformity is positively associated with one’s educational attainment and the number of international organizations in one’s country.The second study (Chapter 3) continues to examine the role of developmental thinking in the making of family values.Using data collected in Gansu Province in China, I show that individuals’ endorsement of neolocal residence, self-choice marriage, gender egalitarianism, late marriage for women, and low fertility depends on the conjunction of preference for development and beliefs in its association with those family attributes.In addition, the impact of developmental thinking on family values holds robust in the presence of local Islamic religion and does not differ significantly between Muslims and non-Muslims.The third study (Chapter 4) examines the opportunity structure of adult higher education which accounts for at least 40% of China’s college credentials production.Using retrospective life histories from the 2003 Chinese General Social Survey, I find that while family obligations (i.e., marriage, parenthood) prevent people from attending colleges at ages 18-45, having a job increases the hazard of going back to college.The positive effect of work, however, is entirely attributable to institutional sponsorship based on affiliations with Party/government agencies and state-owned professional services, cadre leadership, and Party membership.I also find that the state sponsorship became even stronger in the post-1978 Reform era.
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