The Influence of Cultural Capital on Educational and Early Labour Market Outcomes of Young People in Australia

Abstract

Cultural capital is theorized as having a substantial influence on the educational and labour market outcomes of young people, contributing to social reproduction by mediating the effects of socioeconomic background. A number of empirical studies have found impressive effects for cultural capital on a variety of outcomes, but only a limited mediating role. Studies which show effects for cultural capital may be criticised for not incorporating a sufficient array of controls for background factors and the possibility that the observed effects for cultural capital are largely due to reading behaviour rather than participation in elite culture, since both are usually components of cultural capital measures. These issues are examined in this chapter by examining the effects of cultural capital on educational and early labour market outcomes in Australia. The data analysed are from a national longitudinal study of young Australians surveyed between 1995 and 2005. It finds that cultural capital only weakly mediates the effects of socioeconomic and social background. Its effects on educational outcomes are relatively strong, comparable or larger than the effects of parents’ education and occupation, and wealth. However, its effects can be attributed to reading in general, not to participation in elite culture. The effect of cultural capital on occupational attainment was weaker than the effects of parents’ occupation and wealth, and comparable to that of parental education and substantially is mediated through achievement in literacy and numeracy. The effects of cultural capital on earnings was negative, largely due to the limited employment experience of those with higher levels of cultural capital.