Expanding notions of social reproduction: Grandparents’ educational attainment and grandchildren's cognitive skills

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason L. Ferguson ◽  
Douglas D. Ready
Keyword(s):  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Cognitive Skills

scholarly journals The path from social origins to top jobs: social reproduction via education

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Sullivan ◽  
Samantha Parsons ◽  
Francis Green ◽  
Richard D. Wiggins ◽  
George Ploubidis
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Past Research ◽  
School Level ◽  
Occupational Attainment ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
British Cohort Study ◽  
Detailed Picture

This paper provides a comprehensive account of the way in which cognitive and educational attainment mediate the link between social origins and elite social class destinations in mid-life. Using the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70), we assess the roles of a range of pathways through which educational advantage may lead to occupational attainment: cognitive development; private and selective secondary schools; school level qualifications; and higher education, including institution and field of study. Whereas past research has shown a residual direct effect of social origins on class destinations, we find that, once a sufficiently detailed picture of educational attainment is taken into account, education fully explains the link between social origins and top social class destinations. In contrast, the gap between men and women in achieving top social class positions is in no part accounted for by education.

scholarly journals Which Aspects of Education Matter for Early Adult Mortality? Evidence from the High School and Beyond Cohort

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 237802312091808
Author(s):  
John Robert Warren ◽  
Chandra Muller ◽  
Robert A. Hummer ◽  
Eric Grodsky ◽  
Melissa Humphries
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Adult Mortality ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
School Students ◽  
High School And Beyond

What dimensions of education matter for people’s chances of surviving young adulthood? Do cognitive skills, noncognitive skills, course-taking patterns, and school social contexts matter for young adult mortality, even net of educational attainment? The authors analyze data from High School and Beyond, a nationally representative cohort of about 25,000 high school students first interviewed in 1980. Many dimensions of education are associated with young adult mortality, and high school students’ math course taking retains its association with mortality net of educational attainment. This work draws on theories and measures from sociological and educational research and enriches public health, economic, and demographic research on educational gradients in mortality that has relied almost exclusively on ideas of human capital accumulation and measures of degree attainment. The findings also call on social and education researchers to engage together in research on the lifelong consequences of educational processes, school structures, and inequalities in opportunities to learn.

scholarly journals Sibling Similarity in Education Across and Within Societies

Demography ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Grätz ◽  
Kieron J. Barclay ◽  
Øyvind N. Wiborg ◽  
Torkild H. Lyngstad ◽  
Aleksi Karhula ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Parental Education ◽  
Family Background ◽  
The United States ◽  
School Grades ◽  
Sibling Correlations ◽  
Sibling Similarity ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The extent to which siblings resemble each other measures the omnibus impact of family background on life chances. We study sibling similarity in cognitive skills, school grades, and educational attainment in Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We also compare sibling similarity by parental education and occupation within these societies. The comparison of sibling correlations across and within societies allows us to characterize the omnibus impact of family background on education across social landscapes. Across countries, we find larger population-level differences in sibling similarity in educational attainment than in cognitive skills and school grades. In general, sibling similarity in education varies less across countries than sibling similarity in earnings. Compared with Scandinavian countries, the United States shows more sibling similarity in cognitive skills and educational attainment but less sibling similarity in school grades. We find that socioeconomic differences in sibling similarity vary across parental resources, countries, and measures of educational success. Sweden and the United States show greater sibling similarity in educational attainment in families with a highly educated father, and Finland and Norway show greater sibling similarity in educational attainment in families with a low-educated father. We discuss the implications of our results for theories about the impact of institutions and income inequality on educational inequality and the mechanisms that underlie such inequality.

scholarly journals Educational Attainment and Family Background

2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arild Aakvik ◽  
Kjell Vaage ◽  
Kjell G. Salvanes
Keyword(s):  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Parental Education ◽  
Family Income ◽  
Explanatory Variable ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Credit Constraints ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Short Term

Abstract This paper analyses the effect of aspects of family background, such as family income and parental education, on the educational attainment of persons born from 1967 to 1972. Family income is measured at different periods of a child’s life to separate long-term versus short-term effects of family income on educational choices.We find that permanent income matters to a certain degree, and that family income when the child is 0-6 years old is an important explanatory variable for educational attainment later in a child’s life. We find that short-term credit constraints have only a small effect on educational attainment. Long-term factors, such as permanent family income and parental education, are much more important for educational attainment than are short-term credit constraints. Public interventions to alleviate the effects of family background should thus also be targeted at a child’s early years, the shaping period for the cognitive and non-cognitive skills important later in life.

scholarly journals Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Attainment: How Important Are Children’s Personality Characteristics?

2021 ◽  
pp. 000276422199677
Author(s):  
Anne Christine Holtmann ◽  
Laura Menze ◽  
Heike Solga
Keyword(s):  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Intergenerational Transmission ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Educational Aspirations ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Personality Characteristics ◽  
Big Five Personality ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The University ◽  
Educational Transmission

This study examines the role of a wide range of personality characteristics—such as the Big Five personality traits, self-esteem, goal pursuit/adjustment, social behavior, and educational aspirations—for the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment in Germany, and compares their relative importance with that of cognitive skills. We use information on more than 8,000 students from the German National Educational Panel Study. We find that personality characteristics do not mediate the association between parents’ and children’s attainment of the university entrance qualification (the Abitur) by age 19/20. Only educational aspirations are a strong mediator for intergenerational educational transmission. A few personality characteristics moderate intergenerational educational transmission, and they do so in favor of children with high-educated parents either as Matthew effects or compensatory advantages. In contrast to personality characteristics, cognitive skills act as strong mediators, while moderation is rather weak when accounting for personality characteristics—but again, they work in favor of privileged children. Our German study reveals similarities but also differences compared with the mostly U.S.- and U.K.-based research and inspires to rethink the importance of personality characteristics and cognitive skills for intergenerational education attainment.

scholarly journals Unequal Families, Unequal Effects: How Parental Divorce Differentially Impacts Children's Educational Attainment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennie Brand ◽  
Ravaris Moore ◽  
Xi Song ◽  
Yu Xie
Keyword(s):  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Family Income ◽  
Parental Divorce ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Children's Education ◽  
Family Disruption ◽  
Psychosocial Skills ◽  
Children’S Education ◽  
Lower Educational Attainment

A substantial literature suggests that family disruption leads to lower educational attainment among children. We focus on how the effects of parental divorce on children’s education differ across families with varying likelihoods of disruption. Using U.S. panel data, with careful attention to the assumptions and methods needed to estimate total and mediating causal effects, we find a significant effect of parental divorce on educational attainment among children whose parents were unlikely to divorce, for whom divorce was thus a relative shock. We find no effect among children whose parents were likely to divorce and for whom divorce was one of many disadvantages, and thus less economically and socially disruptive. We also find that the observed effect of divorce on children’s education is strongly mediated by post-divorce family income. Children’s psychosocial skills also explain a portion of the effect among children with a low propensity for parental divorce, while cognitive skills play no role in explaining the negative association between divorce and children’s education. Our results suggest that family disruption does not uniformly disrupt children’s attainment.

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