Abstract
The impact of social origin on educational attainment is conditioned on the social context in which people live. In recent decades, with changes in the Chinese society, how has the impact of social origin on educational inequality changed? Based on an analysis of 70 birth cohorts, this study details the effect of social origin on educational inequality and its trends over the past 70 years. The results of this study also indicate that the historical stages hypothesis (HSH) and model-shift hypothesis (MSH) emphasized in previous studies cannot fully describe the historical changes in educational inequality. In addition to macrosocial processes, there may exist other structural factors that also affect educational inequality but are neglected. The social context and its transformation, which shaped the relationship between social origin and educational inequality, need to be examined in more detail.
Highlights
The increasing importance of education and social mobility is seen as a reflection of the openness of social structure
We choose data covering seven years: 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012.6 Because this study examines the effect of ascribed factors on eventual educational attainment, we drop all observations in which respondents are students, or the family information is missing when respondents are 14 or 18 years old
Variables This study focuses on the effect of social origin on educational attainment
Summary
The increasing importance of education and social mobility is seen as a reflection of the openness of social structure. Education is usually seen as an achieved factor, but its attainment is unavoidably affected by people’s social origins or ascribed factors. Blau and Duncan’s (1967) landmark research shows that, in modern industrial society, the educational level of fathers will affect the educational attainment of the offspring, influencing the offspring’s occupational status. The influence of ascribed factors on educational attainment is a crucial mediating mechanism in class reproduction. Some scholars even claim that education is the most important hidden mechanism in the reproduction of social inequality (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). Paying attention to the effects of ascribed factors is the starting point to understand educational inequality
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
