Effects Of Social Origin Research Articles

The Total Effect of Social Origins on Educational Attainment: Meta-analysis of Sibling Correlations From 18 Countries

The sibling correlation (SC), which estimates the total effect of family background (i.e., social origins), can be interpreted as measuring a society's inequality of opportunity. Its sensitivity to observed and unobserved factors makes the SC an all-encompassing measure and an attractive choice for comparative research. We gather and summarize all available estimates of SCs in educational attainment (M = .46, SD = .09) and employ meta-regression to explore variability in these estimates. First, we find significantly lower SCs in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark than in the United States, with U.S. correlations roughly .10 (i.e., 25%) higher. Most other (primarily European) countries in our study are estimated to fall in between these countries and the United States. Second, we find a novel Great Gatsby Curve–type positive association between income inequality in childhood and the SC, both cross-nationally and within countries over time. This finding supports theoretical accounts of the Great Gatsby Curve that emphasize the role of educational inequality as a link between economic inequality and social immobility. It implies that greater equality of educational opportunity likely requires reduced economic inequality. Additionally, correlations between sisters are modestly higher, on average, than those between brothers or all siblings, and we find no overall differences between cohorts.

The selectivity of internal movers: An analysis of the relationship between education, social origin, and geographical mobility in Europe

This paper aims to analyse the social selectivity of internal movers in six European countries, by examining the influence of education and social origin on the likelihood of moving. The study, using ShareLife data, reveals country-specific variations in social selectivity. France and Poland show a skilled selection of internal movers, where education is the primary factor affecting the likelihood of moving, with no additional effect of social origin. In Germany and Sweden, internal movers are selected based on their social origin as well as education, but this double selection differs between the two countries, with a boosting scenario in Germany and a systematic effect of social origin in Sweden, regardless of educational level. Finally, in Spain and Italy, the social selectivity of movers is less evident. Overall, the study highlights the importance of considering the interplay of education and social origin in understanding the social selectivity of internal movers.

Socio-economic status, school performance, and university participation: evidence from linked administrative and survey data from Australia

AbstractDespite being a target of various policy interventions across developed countries, disparities in higher education participation among students from different socio-economic backgrounds remain persistent. While previous literature has outlined the processes through which parental resources can shape students’ educational decisions and pathways, the evidence remains scarce on how the effects of social origin on the participation in higher education vary along the academic performance distribution. Utilising multilevel models applied to large-scale linked administrative and survey data from Australia, this study explores how the participation in higher education varies along the students’ performance distribution by their social origins. Our results show that the effects of social origins on university participation are most pronounced in the middle of the academic performance distribution and taper off towards either end. Consideration is also given to exploring different ways to capture socio-economic status (SES) (i.e. through parental education and occupation) as an indicator of social origins. The results show that parental education serves as a better predictor of students’ university participation than does parental occupation. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for educational policies aimed at increasing university participation among individuals from low-SES backgrounds.

Do secondary education systems influence the overeducation risk of university graduates? A cross-national analysis by field of study and social background

To what extent do features of education systems in the secondary school influence university graduates being overeducated? Previous research shows that the social origin and the field of study of university graduates are relevant predictors of overeducation. However, the strength of the influence of their social origin varies across fields of study. Having a privileged social origin prevents university graduates from being overeducated in fields of study that are not occupationally focused (e.g. humanities), while it is less relevant in other fields (e.g. engineering). The unevenly distributed effect of social origin in relation to the field of study may also vary across countries, depending on the influence of the secondary education system on social selection. Social origin may provide a filter earlier in vocationally oriented educational systems, whereas in comprehensive systems the social filter occurs at the graduate’s entry into the labor market. This would make university graduates from nonoccupationally focused fields of study and with a disadvantaged social origin more vulnerable to being overeducated in countries with comprehensive secondary school systems, while in vocationally oriented systems social origin may be less influential at that later stage. Using Research into Employment and professional FLEXibility/Higher Education as a Generator of Strategic Competences (REFLEX/HEGESCO) data in combination with macro-level indicators, I assess how secondary education systems mediate the influence of social origin in terms of the university graduate’s risk of overeducation by field of study. When using a subjective measure of overeducation results suggest that social origin is less important in predicting the overeducation of university graduates in countries with greater vocational orientation at the secondary level, while in comprehensive systems social origin regains its influence as a filter when graduates in nonoccupationally oriented fields join the labor market. Yet, results do not hold when using an objective measure of overeducation.

Social origin and women’s occupational careers. The role of parenthood in shaping social inequality among Italian women

This paper studies in longitudinal perspective the direct effect of social origin (DESO) on the careers of women in Italy, focusing on the role of motherhood in shaping the DESO and its pattern over the life course. Career outcomes are seen in terms of employment interruptions and of occupational status. First, the paper analyzes when the DESO appears, and how it evolves over the occupational career and the life course. Second, it investigates whether and how motherhood shapes the magnitude and trend over the career of the DESO. Results, based on growth curve models, show that the DESO in occupational status already appears at first job, and then slightly changes over the life course, whereas the social origin gap in the probability of career breaks is small in the first years after labour market entry and then increases. Parenthood does not help to explain the DESO because women from low social origin are more likely to have children than women from high social origin. Rather, it contributes to the increase of the DESO over the life course because of different career trajectories after motherhood, with higher risks to leave employment among women from the lower classes and (slightly) higher occupational premia among women from the service class.

Social origin and expectation of postgraduate enrolment among spanish university undergraduates mediation and moderation effect of fields of study and grades

The effect of social origin on educational expectations has mostly focused on adolescents. Yet, the expansion of higher education across the OECD area has made the transition from bachelor to master programs increasingly consequential for inequality of educational opportunities and social mobility. Applying multinomial logistic regression to data from a survey carried out in 2018 among university students in three Spanish regions, our research reveals the existence of a still meaningful effect of socioeconomic origin on expectations of postgraduate enrolment among university undergraduates, even after controlling for academic progression, performance and choice of field of study. In other words, the analysis provides evidence of a secondary effect of social origin on educational expectations at this late stage of the educational career. Multinomial logistic regression and the Karlson-Holm-Breen method applied to the same data also reveal the inexistence of a mediation effect of field of studies or academic performance. In this sense, our evidence points at a clearly higher weight of the secondary effect, rather than the primary effect of social origin, on the transmission of educational advantage to expectations of postgraduate enrolment among undergraduates. Yet, a moderating effect of both fields of studies and academic performance does exist. As regards field of studies, against our initial expectation, the effect of social origin turns out to be stronger in some fields of studies with better labour market access (strong fields). Regarding academic performance, the sensitiveness of postgraduate enrolment expectation to grades obtained so far decreases with social origin, thus revealing a lingering compensatory effect of social origin at the end of the educational trajectory.

Occupational origin effects on wage and market income (inequality): The cases of Spain and Germany

Most of the economic and sociological literature focuses on the role of social origin background on class, or wage outcomes. Yet, two individuals may have similar wages, but very different market incomes, so that the role of social origin may differ between these two individuals. This paper aims to explore the social origin associations – net of individual occupation – on two types of monetary outcomes: standard annual salaries and market income. The study compares Spain and Germany to analyse variations in social origin associations within their distinct labour market structures and institutional frameworks. Using unconditional quantile regressions, the findings reveal that Spain exhibits a significant “residual effect of social origins” on both wage and market income. Spain also demonstrates significant class-ceiling effects, signalling barriers to upward mobility. Conversely, Germany shows a limited residual origin correlation and no significant class barriers, aligning well with the human capital theory. Additionally, Spain experiences a significant increase in inequality between 2002 and 2017, primarily attributed to changes in the characteristics of the labour market structure. On the other hand, Germany is again found to be a more mobile country with no significant dynamic changes in inequalities.

Does social origin modify the heritability of cognitive ability? A close look at the relevance of different parental resources

Cognitive ability plays a prominent role among individual characteristics favorable for success in life. The extent to which endowments for cognitive ability can be realized is an important aspect of unequal life chances in a society. Social origin is considered particularly relevant for realizing cognitive genetic potentials, but related empirical findings are mixed. This paper examines whether there are differences in the interactions between genetic variation and social origin across distinct parental resources and whether the patterns of interactions are (non)linear for three different cohorts of twins (late childhood, adolescents, young adults). Our results showed inconsistent interaction patterns across cohorts and parental resources. A pattern following the Scarr-Rowe Interaction (SRI) was observed only for the younger twins (late childhood) and only for parental occupational status. There were (for the most) no interaction patterns for the adolescent twins. For the young adult twins, patterns partly followed a “reverse” SRI. Taken together, the results suggested that, first of all, parental occupational status and household income moderate either genetic or environmental contributions to cognitive ability in Germany, however, not consistently as a Scarr-Rowe interaction. Using composite measures would have obscured these differential effects of social origin. The interaction patterns are mostly not in line with an SRI but can be approximated using a linear approach in many cases.

Rob Mare career trajectory transcription

Only recently have sociologists begun to examine the social origins of educational mismatches in more detail. This research not only repeatedly found, but also investigated why individuals from lower social origin more often have a higher level of education than required for their job (overeducation), and why individuals from a higher social origin more often realize high positions despite having a lower level of education than required for their job (undereducation). While these studies provide additional and valuable empirical insights into the effect of social origin on both types of mismatch separately, to date there has been no investigation on general sociological meaningful conditions, under which the social origin unfolds an effect on undereducation and overeducation in the first place. This paper addresses this gap by examining the relevance of intergenerational stability for the effect of social origin on mismatches. It does so by drawing on arguments from sociological theories on intergenerational (im-)mobility, data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the period 1990–2017, and two different measurement methods for educational mismatches. The empirical results show evidence of substantial heterogeneity in the effect of social origin on educational mismatches: A higher parental status is found to be advantageous only for employees with intergenerational stability in social classes and/or occupational tasks. This indicates that the intergenerational transmission of class-specific traits and occupational skills contribute to the effect of social origin on mismatches. The results show no effect of parental status on educational mismatches among employees who are intergenerationally mobile and make up half of the German labor force under investigation. Since this heterogeneity is also found among workers who immigrated to Germany as adults, parental networks within Germany and the corresponding social capital can be ruled out as the main driver behind this finding. Although educational attainment is the most important pathway of intergenerational status maintenance, the results suggest that educational mismatches offer a means of identifying systematic deviations from this pathway. Individuals who follow in the footsteps of their high-status parents are more likely to be employed either at or above their level of education. In the light of the strong heterogeneity revealed, complementary explanations and routes for further research to investigate the link between intergenerational (im-)mobility, social origin and educational mismatches are discussed.

Investigating the role of educational aspirations as central mediators of secondary school track choice in Germany

Educational aspirations are known to be one of the most relevant predictors of secondary school choice after finishing elementary school in the German educational system. Since aspirations themselves mostly derive from the social background of a family, the question arises whether aspirations can be understood as a mediating factor explaining how social origin determines choice of school. In addition to that, it would be of great interest to disentangle parental and filial aspirations to better understand which factor is more relevant for the decision. After proposing a unified theoretical model that accounts for both primary and secondary effects of social origin, the analyses attempt to quantify the share that is mediated through aspirations and hence test the model empirically. Using large scale panel data, I can demonstrate that aspirations explain a considerable share of the variance of the decision for choosing a school track in secondary education (ca. 24% points). The following analyses estimate that the indirect effect of social origin that is mediated through aspirations amounts to almost 80%, which means that the residual pathway must therefore be small in comparison. Detailed analyses reveal that especially parental realistic aspirations explain the major share of this effect (about 42%) and their aspirations will be decisive when conflicting with the aspirations of their children.

Where DESO Disappears: Spatial Inequality and Social Stratification at Labour Market Entry

Abstract At country-level, a host of evidence suggests there is a sizeable direct effect of social origin (DESO) on initial labour market outcomes, net of educational attainment. What is true at country-level is not always true below country-level, however. Using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Survey and the German Socio-Economic Panel, we show that variable spatial opportunity structures moderate the size of DESO at labour market entry, such that there are places where DESO disappears. Social origins assume greater importance as local labour market conditions deteriorate: in weak local labour markets, non-graduates are approximately 16 percentage points less likely to find employment if their parents are care workers rather than secondary school teachers, while graduates typically obtain first jobs that are 7–9 ISEI points lower in status. These findings highlight the distinctive geography of social stratification processes at labour market entry and potentially beyond.

At Which Age is Education the Great Equalizer? A Causal Mediation Analysis of the (In-)Direct Effects of Social Origin over the Life Course

Abstract The mechanisms linking parental resources to their children’s opportunities are of fundamental interest to sociologists. This study is the first to provide a dynamic life course assessment of the origin–education–destination triangle using causal mediation analysis. While the age-as-equalizer hypothesis suggests that for the highly educated, direct effects of social origin are high at young ages and decrease over the life course, the age-as-stratifier hypothesis suggests that for individuals with low educational attainment, direct effects of social origin are low at young ages and increase over the life course. Findings using panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study are largely consistent with these hypotheses for various measures of social origin and social destination. Overall, this study demonstrates how causal mediation analysis provides precise effect definitions that allow scholars to assess mechanisms when status transmission processes depend on educational attainment.

Intergenerational social mobility and the Brexit vote: How social origins and destinations divide Britain

AbstractTo explain political divisions within British society, the current scholarship highlights the importance of the ‘winners’ and ‘left‐behind’ of political economic transformations. Yet, the impact of widespread absolute intergenerational social mobility in the past half century, which resulted in socio‐economic gains or losses for many, has not been systematically addressed. Our paper assesses how intergenerationally mobile voters’ positions in the Brexit referendum differ from their non‐mobile counterparts. We differentiate between the effects of social origins, social mobility and destination position. To do so, we model data from Understanding Society with a diagonal reference model. We show that origins are nearly as important as current socio‐economic positions for predicting the probability of voting to ‘leave’ or ‘remain’ in the Brexit referendum. We find that a first‐generation graduate would be up to 10 percentage points less likely to vote ‘Remain’ than a graduate whose parents also went to university.

Rebel without a Cause: The Effects of Social Origins and Disposable Income on Rule Violations

Abstract Are upper-class individuals more inclined to violate rules? Using behavioural data, recent studies have challenged the traditional assumption of upper social class members being less rule violating, while other studies find no or opposite effects. We bring together behavioural decision-making games with traditional survey measures in a unique setup to re-evaluate the proposed relation between social class and rule violations, distinguishing between the economic and the psychological components of social class. Drawing from a cohort of 750 Swiss adults, we investigate how the conditions they were born in (social origins) and the current financial resources (disposable income) affect self-reported and behaviourally measured rule violations in the lab. Interestingly, our findings show that disposable income impacts the behaviour of individuals conditional upon their social origins. For people with upper social origins an increase in disposable income leads to more rule violations than for people with lower social origins. Additional analyses show that a similar pattern emerges when analysing the different perceptions of morality that the two groups have. We conclude that with increasing disposable income, people with upper social origins become more morally flexible, as they are more tolerant of rule violations and violate the rules more often than individuals with lower social origins.

Privilege travels: migration and labour market outcomes of Southern Italian graduates

This paper contributes to the literature on social stratification by analysing the role of internal migration as a possible channel for the intergenerational transmission of inequality. While internal migration is associated with social mobility, it can also be used as a strategy of status maintenance among graduates from privileged backgrounds. The aim of this paper is to scrutinize whether internal migration for study or work, and subsequent labour market outcomes, are associated with social origins. Using a rich administrative and survey data set on a cohort of Italian graduates, findings show a substantive effect of social origins on graduates’ migration for study but not on migration for work. Finally, the results also more tentatively indicate that migration for study is one relevant path connecting social origins and income, thus emphasizing how privilege is not bound to place, but travels.

Labour market prospects of young adults in Europe: differential effects of social origin during the Great Recession

ABSTRACT Research on the direct effect of social origin (DESO) focuses on how background influences later labour market outcomes after accounting for education. Growing up in a household of low social origin might decrease the chances of certain future outcomes; however, the extent to which this matters is contingent on the economic cycle. Using the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) and the European Social Survey (ESS) between 2002 and 2014, we analyse whether the gap in the DESO in terms of employment and earnings widened following the Great Recession for young adults (25-34) in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom. Our results suggest that young adults of high social origin faced more disadvantages in terms of employment than young adults of low social origin in France, Spain and the United Kingdom. On the other hand, analyses show that young adults of low social origin experienced more disadvantages in terms of earnings than their counterparts of high social origin in Spain.

Parental time preferences and educational choices: The role of children’s gender and of social origin

This paper contributes to the literature on Relative Risk Aversion theory in two ways: first, by considering that the effect of time preferences may differ according to both children’s gender and social origin; second, by exploring this possibility for different educational outcomes: upper secondary school choices and university enrollment. We use data of the Survey of Household Income and Wealth, which contains questions specifically addressed to capture an individual’s time discounting preference, to further explore the association between time discounting preference and the effect of social origin on educational outcomes in Italy. In line with prior research, we find that time preferences only have a meaningful effect among children of lowly educated parents. But such an effect, in turn, differs by gender: parental time preferences matter more for sons than for daughters of lowly educated parents. This gender effect is found both for upper secondary choices and for entry into higher education.

Unequal expectations? Testing decisional mechanisms for secondary effects of social origin

It is a common research practice to decompose the effect of social origin on an educational expectation into a primary effect, via academic performance, and a secondary effect, computed as the inequality that survives the control of performance. In this paper, I examine how specific decisional mechanisms described in the Cultural Capital and Rational Action theories contribute to explain the inequalities that survive the control of performance in the configuration of educational expectations. Cultural Capital Theory argues that participation in the dominant culture at schools, the endowment of educational resources and the development of skill-generating habits contribute to holding ambitious expectations over and above performance. In Rational Action Theory, students form expectations at each level of performance by gathering information, pondering benefits and costs, and evaluating the risk of academic failure and social demotion, which in turn might account for the secondary effect of social origin. Relying on Spanish data from 2018 PISA, I observe that Cultural Capital and Rational Action mechanisms are compatible in the explanation of the secondary effects of social origin, although two-thirds of that inequality remain unexplained. Nonetheless, I find differences in how those mechanisms perform in vertical (whether to enrol an educational level) and horizontal expectations (what alternative is preferred in that educational level).

Positional education and intergenerational status transmission in Brazil

This paper examines the role of education in the intergenerational status transmission process in Brazil against the context of marked educational expansion. We ask whether expansion has been successful in reducing the indirect effects of social origins on destinations, mediated via schooling. Specifically, we consider the positionality of education by adopting a relative measure. Using data from the National Household Sample Survey of Brazil we predict respondents’ occupational status from three birth cohorts with path analysis models. We compare the results using absolute and relative measures for education as a mediating variable. Our main findings show that educational expansion did not reduce the indirect association between origin and destination for either men or women, when education is measured as a positional good. Our conclusion challenges the prevailing understanding in Brazil that educational expansion contributes to increasing social fluidity, especially in light of the declining returns to schooling in the labor market. Based on this new evidence, we argue that education is not losing its value as a mediating variable within the status transmission process, which can only be noticed when it is measured in relative terms. Our findings thus provide important new insights on how we interpret the intergenerational status transmission process in middle income countries such as Brazil.

Minding the curve: The influence of social origin on earnings inequality by education in Mexico

Relying on data from the Mexican Mobility Survey for 2006, I evaluate by how much earnings inequality improves upon reducing the influence of social origin on educational attainment. A semiparametric estimation of a counterfactual distribution is used to simulate a distribution of earnings that is not overdetermined by the effect of social origin on education. The contrast between the simulated and the observed distribution reveals that social origin worsens inequality by inducing an earnings bonus. In particular, the earnings bonus associated with social origin, benefits most those with a high school degree or more. Those who have attained at most middle school obtain a small earnings bonus or none at all. Social origin's boosting of returns to education is most salient above the median of the earnings distribution and increases disproportionately above the 80th percentile. The results emphasize the importance of universal educational opportunities for reducing the effect of social origin on labor market outcomes. The absence of any indirect effect of social origin on the earnings of those with less than a high school education is not consistent with sociological perspectives that emphasize social reproduction mechanisms in explaining inter-generational persistence in the labor market.