Does parents’ economic, cultural, and social capital explain the social class effect on educational attainment in the Scandinavian mobility regime?

Emergent ethnographic research disentangles “social capital” from other components of social class (e.g., material and human capital) to show how class-stratified parental social networks exacerbate educational inequality among schoolchildren. The authors build upon this research by using survey data to reexamine whether certain forms of parental social capital create educational advantages for socioeconomically privileged students vis-à-vis their less economically fortunate peers. By drawing a distinction between the availability of social capital and its convertibility, the authors find that whereas larger stocks of parental social capital accompany higher rungs on the social class ladder, its educational utility is less clearly associated with class status. A possible exception to this pattern pertains to the educational utility of middle-class parents’ ideas about the collective efficacy of influencing school policies and practices. At issue is whether a more inclusive understanding of the material and sociological reasons for educational inequality can spur educationally useful social exchange among parents across social class boundaries.

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Educational Expansion and Social Mobility: The Scottish Case

Social Policy and Society ◽

10.1017/s147474641000059x ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 251-264 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Cristina Iannelli

Keyword(s):

Social Class ◽

Educational Attainment ◽

Social Mobility ◽

Social Inequalities ◽

Educational Policies ◽

Educational Expansion ◽

Class Differences ◽

Life Chances ◽

The Social

For over a century, the goal of reducing class inequalities in educational attainment has been based at least in part on the belief that this would help to equalise life chances. Drawing upon the main findings of three ESRC-funded projects, this paper reviews the empirical evidence on trends in social class inequalities in educational attainment and the role of education in promoting social mobility in Scotland. The findings show that in the second half of the twentieth century, despite the increase in overall levels of attainment, class differences in educational attainment persisted. Educational policies in Scotland supported educational expansion which allowed larger numbers of working-class children to climb the social class ladder than in the past. However, these did not translate into any break with the patterns of social inequalities in the chances of entering the top-level occupations. The conclusions highlight that educational policies on their own are not powerful enough to change patterns of social mobility which are mainly driven by labour market and social class structures.

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The social context of nearest neighbors shapes educational attainment regardless of class origin

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1922532117 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 117 (26) ◽

pp. 14918-14925

Author(s):

Finn Hedefalk ◽

Martin Dribe

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Social Class ◽

Educational Attainment ◽

Growing Up ◽

Neighborhood Conditions ◽

High Class ◽

The Social ◽

Class Origin ◽

University Degree

We study the association between sociospatial neighborhood conditions throughout childhood and educational attainment in adulthood. Using unique longitudinal microdata for a medium-sized Swedish town, we geocode its population at the address level, 1939 to 1967, and link individuals to national registers, 1968 to 2015. Thus, we adopt a long-term perspective on the importance of nearby neighbors during a period when higher education expanded. Applying a method for estimating individual neighborhoods at the address level, we analyze the association between the geographically weighted social class of the nearest 6 to 100 childhood neighbors (ages 2 to 17), and the likelihood of obtaining a university degree by age 40, controlling for both family social class and school districts. We show that even when growing up in a town with relatively low economic inequality, the social class of the nearest same-age neighbors in childhood was associated with educational attainment, and that the associations were similar regardless of class origin. Growing up in low-class neighborhoods lowered educational attainment; growing up in high-class neighborhoods increased attainment. Social class and neighborhoods reinforced each other, implying that high-class children clustered with each other had much higher odds of obtaining a university degree than low-class children from low-class neighborhoods. Thus, even if all groups benefited from the great expansion of free higher education in Sweden (1960s to 1970s), the large inequalities between the classes and neighborhoods remained unchanged throughout the period. These findings show the importance of an advantageous background, both regarding the immediate family and the networks of nearby people of the same age.

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Educational attainment and social class in adoptees: genetic and environmental contributions

Journal of Biosocial Science ◽

10.1017/s0021932000020964 ◽

1983 ◽

Vol 15 (4) ◽

pp. 509-518 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

T. W. Teasdale ◽

T. I. A. Sørensen

Keyword(s):

Social Class ◽

Educational Attainment ◽

The Social ◽

Years Of Schooling

SummaryThe number of years of schooling and adult social class of 1417 adoptees are found to correlate with the social class of both their biological and adoptive fathers. For female adoptees the effect of both paternal social class values upon own social class appears to be mediated through the influence of the former upon years of schooling. For male adoptees, some residual direct correlations of paternal social class with offspring's social class, independent of years of schooling in the adoptee, are observed.

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The elephant in the room? Class and creative careers in British advertising agencies

Human Relations ◽

10.1177/0018726709335551 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 62 (7) ◽

pp. 1011-1039 ◽

Cited By ~ 47

Author(s):

Charlotte McLeod ◽

Stephanie O'Donohoe ◽

Barbara Townley

Keyword(s):

Social Capital ◽

Life History ◽

Social Class ◽

Middle Class ◽

Cultural Capital ◽

Cultural Barriers ◽

Advertising Agencies ◽

Career Trajectories ◽

The Social ◽

Class Background

Advertising in Britain has traditionally been the preserve of a middle-class, public school and Oxbridge-educated workforce. Although this narrow recruitment base is recognized as problematic, the influence of social class on advertising careers remains largely unexplored. This article explores the career trajectories of British advertising creatives from different social class backgrounds and the forms of capital at their disposal. Drawing on life history interviews with creatives, we explore how they got started, got in and got on in advertising careers. In particular, we highlight how the `working-class' creatives struggled to overcome the economic, social and cultural barriers they face in entering the industry. We suggest, however, that once `in', the influence of their social class background was more subtle and less detrimental, due to the social capital they accumulated en route and the value of their distinctive brand of cultural capital.

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Understanding the Social Mobility Chances of Children from Working- Class Backgrounds in Britain: How Important are Cognitive Ability and Locus of Control?

10.31235/osf.io/rqtwc ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Bastian Andreas Betthäuser ◽

Mollie Bourne ◽

Erzsebet Bukodi

Keyword(s):

Locus Of Control ◽

Social Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Educational Attainment ◽

Cognitive Ability ◽

Labour Market ◽

Social Stratification ◽

Class Effect ◽

Individual Level ◽

Parental Class

Research in social stratification has shown that children from working-class backgrounds tend to obtain substantially lower levels of educational attainment and lower labour market positions than children from higher social class backgrounds. However, we still know relatively little about the micro-level processes that account for this empirical regularity. Our study examines the roles of two individual-level characteristics—cognitive ability and locus of control—in mediating the effect of individuals’ parental class background on their educational attainment and social class position in Britain. We find that cognitive ability mediates only about 35 per cent of the total parental class effect on educational attainment and only about 20 per cent of the total parental class effect on respondents’ social class position, net of their educational attainment. These findings contradict existing claims that differences in the life chances of children from different social class backgrounds are largely due to differences in cognitive ability. Moreover, we find that although individuals’ locus of control plays some role in mediating the parental class effect, its role is substantially smaller than the mediating role of cognitive ability. We measure individuals’ social class positions at different points in their careers—at labour market entry and at occupational maturity—and find that the mediating roles of cognitive ability and locus of control are remarkably stable across individuals’ working lives.

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