The Roots of Educational Inequality

Abstract Background The growing rates of obesity in developing countries are alarming. There is a paucity of evidence about disparities of obesity in Lesotho. This study examined socioeconomic and area-based inequalities in obesity among non-pregnant women in Lesotho. Methods Data were extracted from the 2004, 2009 and 2014 Lesotho Demographic and Health Surveys (LDHS) and analyzed through the recently updated Health Equity Assessment Toolkit (HEAT) of the World Health Organization. Obesity prevalence was disaggregated by four equity stratifiers, namely education, wealth, residence and sub-national region. For each equity stratifier, simple and complex as well as relative and absolute summary measures were calculated. A 95% confidence interval was used to measure statistical significance of findings. Results We noticed substantial wealth-driven (D = -21.10, 95% CI; − 25.94, − 16.26), subnational region (PAR = -11.82, 95%CI; − 16.09, − 7.55) and urban-rural (− 9.82, 95% CI; − 13.65, − 5.99) inequalities in obesity prevalence without the inequalities improved over time in all the studied years. However, we did not identify educational inequality in obesity. Conclusions Wealth-driven and geographical inequalities was identified in Lesotho in all the studied time periods while education related inequalities did not appear during the same time period. All population groups in the country need to be reached with interventions to reduce the burden of obesity in the country.

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“I am not a guinea pig”: Parental opportunity hoarding and tracking reform in Germany

Research in Comparative and International Education ◽

10.1177/1745499921995786 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. 64-82

Author(s):

Lana Apple ◽

Mira Debs

Keyword(s):

Social Capital ◽

Discourse Analysis ◽

Guinea Pig ◽

Education System ◽

Educational Inequality ◽

Tracking System ◽

School Structure ◽

Student Background ◽

Achievement Outcomes

PISA test data from 2000 to today have shown Germany’s education system is one of the most inequitable within the OECD, with high correlations between student background and achievement outcomes. Scholars have identified the highly differentiated school structure, which tracks students as young as 10 years old, as a central cause. This scholarship has not evaluated why German tracking has proved difficult to reform over the last 20 years, despite evidence of negative outcomes. Using a case study of parents’ actions in Hamburg, this paper employs a discourse analysis of debates surrounding a tracking reform to argue that opportunity hoarding—that is, parents with more social capital maintaining certain advantages through ingrained systems that are theoretically open to all—may contribute to why Germany’s early tracking system persists despite evidence showing that it increases educational inequality. The findings presented have implications for an international discussion of tracking reform and opportunity hoarding.

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Globalization and educational inequality during the 18th to 20th centuries: Latin America in global comparison

Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History ◽

10.1017/s021261091000008x ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 28 (2) ◽

pp. 279-305 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Joerg Baten ◽

Christina Mumme

Keyword(s):

Developing Countries ◽

Latin America ◽

Strong Evidence ◽

Educational Inequality ◽

Gdp Per Capita ◽

Positive Effects ◽

Global Comparison ◽

Per Capita ◽

The Rich

AbstractThis paper explores the inequality of numeracy and education by studying school years and numeracy of the rich and poor, as well as of tall and short individuals. To estimate numeracy, the age-heaping method is used for the 18th to early 20th centuries. Testing the hypothesis that globalization might have increased the inequality of education, we find evidence that 19th century globalization actually increased inequality in Latin America, but 20th century globalization had positive effects by reducing educational inequality in a broader sample of developing countries. Moreover, we find strong evidence for Kuznets’s inverted U hypothesis, that is, rising educational inequality with GDP per capita in the period until 1913 and the opposite after 1945.

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Relative risk aversion models: How plausible are their assumptions?

Rationality and Society ◽

10.1177/1043463121994087 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 104346312199408

Author(s):

Carlo Barone ◽

Katherin Barg ◽

Mathieu Ichou

Keyword(s):

Relative Risk ◽

Risk Aversion ◽

Loss Aversion ◽

Educational Inequality ◽

Risky Choice ◽

Relative Risk Aversion ◽

Downward Mobility ◽

Educational Decisions ◽

Empirically Supported ◽

Occupational Risks

This work examines the validity of the two main assumptions of relative risk-aversion models of educational inequality. We compare the Breen-Goldthorpe (BG) and the Breen-Yaish (BY) models in terms of their assumptions about status maintenance motives and beliefs about the occupational risks associated with educational decisions. Concerning the first assumption, our contribution is threefold. First, we criticise the assumption of the BG model that families aim only at avoiding downward mobility and are insensitive to the prospects of upward mobility. We argue that the loss-aversion assumption proposed by BY is a more realistic formulation of status-maintenance motives. Second, we propose and implement a novel empirical approach to assess the validity of the loss-aversion assumption. Third, we present empirical results based on a sample of families of lower secondary school leavers indicating that families are sensitive to the prospects of both upward and downward mobility, and that the loss-aversion hypothesis of BY is empirically supported. As regards the risky choice assumption, we argue that families may not believe that more ambitious educational options entail occupational risks relative to less ambitious ones. We present empirical evidence indicating that, in France, the academic path is not perceived as a risky option. We conclude that, if the restrictive assumptions of the BG model are removed, relative-risk aversion needs not drive educational inequalities.

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Responding to educational inequality in Ireland; Harnessing teachers’ perspectives to develop a framework for professional conversations

Educational Studies ◽

10.1080/03055698.2021.1931043 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-27

Author(s):

Gerry Jeffers ◽

Carmel Lillis

Keyword(s):

Educational Inequality ◽

Teachers Perspectives ◽

Professional Conversations

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Do Well-off Families Compensate for Low Cognitive Ability? Evidence on Social Inequality in Early Schooling from a Twin Study

Sociology of Education ◽

10.1177/0038040719830698 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 92 (2) ◽

pp. 150-175 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Carlos J. Gil-Hernández

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Ability ◽

Fixed Effects ◽

Equal Opportunity ◽

Educational Inequality ◽

Educational Transitions ◽

Downward Mobility ◽

Highly Educated ◽

Academic Track ◽

Early Schooling ◽

Academic Potential

This article bridges the literature on educational inequality between and within families to test whether high–socioeconomic status (SES) families compensate for low cognitive ability in the transition to secondary education in Germany. The German educational system of early-ability tracking (at age 10) represents a stringent setting for the compensatory hypothesis. Overall, previous literature offers inconclusive findings. Previous research between families suffers from the misspecification of parental SES and ability, while most within-family research did not stratify the analysis by SES or the ability distribution. To address these issues, I draw from the TwinLife study to implement a twin fixed-effects design that minimizes unobserved confounding. I report two main findings. First, highly educated families do not compensate for twins’ differences in cognitive ability at the bottom of the ability distribution. In the German system of early-ability tracking, advantaged families may have more difficulties to compensate than in countries where educational transitions are less dependent on ability. Second, holding parents’ and children’s cognitive ability constant, pupils from highly educated families are 27% more likely to attend the academic track. This result implies wastage of academic potential for disadvantaged families, challenging the role of cognitive ability as the leading criterion of merit for liberal theories of equal opportunity. These findings point to the importance of other factors that vary between families with different resources and explain educational success, such as noncognitive abilities, risk aversion to downward mobility, and teachers’ bias.

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