A multidimensional measure of social origin: Theoretical perspectives, operationalization and empirical application in the field of educational inequality research

(2019) - Pia Nicoletta Blossfeld

Journal: Quality & Quantity
Link:: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11135-018-0818-2
DOI:: 10.1007/s11135-018-0818-2
Links::
Tags:: #paper #Attainment #SocialClass #Education
Cite Key:: [@blossfeldMultidimensionalMeasureSocial2019]

Abstract

This article describes the theoretical reasons and empirical operationalization of a multidimensional social origin measure. It is assumed that different parental resources are linked to social inequality through distinct mechanisms. This social origin variable can be used for the analysis of status inconsistencies as well as cumulating and compensating effects of social origin resources on inequality of opportunity. The proposed measure is easy to operationalize and to apply in cross-sectional, longitudinal or cross-national research. A great methodological advantage of the proposed origin measure is that it avoids the problem of multicollinearity that is prevalent in analyses that include various parental resources as separate covariates into a statistical model. To illustrate this social origin measure, we apply it to the field of educational inequality research and use data from the National Educational Panel Study in Germany. However, the approach can be easily generalized to other sociological or economic studies where social inequality is of interest (such as labor market, demographic, political, migration or ethnic research). The illustrative example combines the information of three family resources (parental education, parental class and parental status), but it can be extended to include further family resources such as income or wealth measures.

Notes

“examines how the highest educational attainment has changed in the process of educational expansion in Germany between 1950 and 2010” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 1)

“Which role does the changing social background composition play in changes in inequalities of educational opportunity?” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 1)

“despite a period of substantial educational reform, the overall originspecific inequalities as well as the demand to earn the highest educational degree within the various social origin groups have remained surprisingly stable across birth cohorts” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 1)

“general trend towards educational growth at higher education in Germany seems to be mainly driven by intercohort changes in social background composition.” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 1)

“expansion of education has been driven by two major political objectives: (1) to raise the educational attainment levels of the younger workforce in the modernization process and (2) to reduce the origin-specific educational inequalities across cohorts (Blossfeld, 1985, 2018; Müller & Haun, 1994; Schindler, 2014).” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 1)

“the educational career has been seen as a preparation phase to entry into the labour market and family formation (Blossfeld et al., 2019; Kohli, 2007; Mayer, 1991; Winkler, 2017).” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 1)

“some sociologists have shown that in the post-war decades, inequality of educational opportunity by social origin had remained quite persistent across birth cohorts (Becker, 2003; Blossfeld, 1993: 62; Hadjar & Berger, 2010; Handl, 1985; Meulemann, 1992; Pfeffer, 2008)” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 1)

“other sociologists have presented evidences that educational inequality has (at least somewhat) declined (Breen, Luijkx, Müller, & Pollak, 2009; Henz & Maas, 1995; Müller & Haun, 1994; Schimpl-Neimanns, 2000).” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 1)

“best of my knowledge, only three empirical studies addressed the impact of intercohort changes of social background composition on increasing educational attainment in the process of educational expansion in Germany.” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 2)

“This article moves beyond by providing a much more differentiated descriptive analysis of the three most important educational attainment levels (in terms of unemployment rates, monetary returns and career opportunities; see Hausner, Söhnlein, Weber, & Weber, 2015; Müller & Shavit, 1998; Schmillen & Stüber, 2014)” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 2)

“(1) leaving the educational system after compulsory education as an unskilled (without any general or vocational certificate) (see Solga, 2002: 488), (2) having acquired a vocational training certificate after completing secondary education (‘Hauptschulabschluss’, ‘Mittlere Reife’ or ‘Abitur’) or only an ‘Abitur’, and (3) having completed a tertiary degree (‘Fachhochschulabschluss’ or ‘Universitätsabschluss’).” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 2)

“the outcome of educational expansion is strongly dependent on the choices and educational demands of individuals and families from different social origins (Becker, 2003) as well as on the intercohort compositional change of social origin (Blossfeld, 2018; Köhler, 1992; Mare, 1979; Ziefle, 2017)” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 2)

“Rising educational demand is driven by disadvantaged families: In general, more privileged families have higher educational demands than disadvantaged families to guarantee status maintenance. However, disadvantaged social origin groups might” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 2)

“catch up in their educational aspirations with privileged families in the process of educational expansion for several reasons (Boudon, 1974): First, Erikson and Jonsson (1996) argue that the general improvement in living standards in the decades of economic growth and welfare-state expansion should have been more beneficial for the educational opportunities of children from disadvantaged families” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 3)

“Second, modernization theory claims that in the process of educational expansion children from lower social origin can increase their relative demand for education, simply because the educational system becomes less ascriptive and more meritocratic (Lenski, 1966; Treiman, 1970)” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 3)

“The lengthening of compulsory education has also lowered the additional costs of longer educational participation in upper secondary and tertiary education (Breen et al., 2009: 1480).” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 3)

“mass media increasingly informs parents from lower social origins about educational opportunities, which is likely to reduce their risk aversion in comparison to parents from higher social origins across cohorts (Breen & Goldthorpe, 1997).” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 3)

“if children from privileged families are already saturated at a certain higher educational level, children from lower social origin should be able to increase their relative educational opportunities in the process of educational expansion (Raftery & Hout, 1993)” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 3)

“Increasing demand for education is mainly driven by privileged families: Cultural reproduction theory states that privileged families use the educational system as an instrument to exclude members of disadvantaged social origin from high status jobs on the labour market (Bourdieu, 1973; Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Collins, 1971; Hadjar & Becker, 2006: 14, 2009).” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 3)

“process of educational expansion the relative demand for tertiary education increases particularly for privileged families who anxiously try to preserve and expand their advantage (Hadjar & Becker, 2006: 13–14; Shavit & Blossfeld, 1993: 8).” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 3)

“Elevator effect across birth cohorts: Cultural reproduction theory can also explain that all social origin groups might look for an increasingly higher level of education for their children in the process of occupational upgrading and technological development without any significant change in relative origin-specific educational opportunities (Shavit & Blossfeld, 1993: 8; Ziefle, 2017: 53)” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 3)

“This is the persistent inequality thesis of Shavit and Blossfeld (1993). Moreover, rational action theory also predicts an elevator effect if the costs and benefits of education change, but the relative evaluation of costs and benefits has remained quite unchanged for the different social origin groups (Becker, 2003; Breen & Goldthorpe, 1997: 3).” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 3)

“Intercohort changes of social background composition: The processes of educational expansion and occupational upgrading lead itself to a rising proportion of families from more advantaged backgrounds (with better education and higher occupational positions and status (in a Weberian sense)) at the expense of a declining proportion of disadvantaged families across successive cohorts of students (Müller & Haun, 1994: 39; Ziefle, 2017: 56; Mare, 1979; Raftery & Hout, 1993; Hadjar & Becker, 2006: 36)” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 3)

“According to prospect and status maintenance theories, families tend to secure for their children at least the same educational (and social) attainment level as they have achieved themselves (Tversky & Kahneman, 1992; Breen & Goldthorpe, 1997).” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 3)

“This intercohort upgrading in the structure of the parents’ resources is likely to occur, even if the inequality of origin-specific educational opportunities decreases (see Hypothesis 1), increases (see Hypothesis 2), or remains persistent (see Hypothesis 3) across cohorts (Köhler, 1992: 22; Ziefle, 2017: 58)” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 3)

“For sociologists, the family is considered as the unit of social stratification (Sorensen, 1994). It provides educational, economic and social network resources to support children’s educational careers. Each of these resources is connected with specific mechanisms influencing educational inequality of youth and young adults and thus, allows for a more comprehensive view on how social origin influences educational attainment (Blossfeld, 2018, 2019a; Bukodi & Goldthorpe, 2013; Chan & Goldthorpe, 2007)” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 3)

“education captures parents’ capacity to assist their children with homework and to guide them strategically through the educational system (Bukodi & Goldthorpe, 2013:3). Parental class represents economic resources that are available to families to support their children at school (Bukodi & Goldthorpe, 2013:2). Finally, parental status stands for social networks, group-specific cultural resources” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 3)

“and cultural tastes, which are likely to reinforce educational inequality between social groups (Bukodi & Goldthorpe, 2013:3).” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 4)

“binary logistic regressions for three dependent variables are estimated (see also Cox & Snell, 1970:13)” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 4)

“The three dependent variables are” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 4)

“logistic regression models are applied for descriptive purposes (see Breen, Karlson, & Holm, 2018: 51; Kuha & Mills, 2018; Rohwer, 2012). Thus, the interest lies in how a change in the values of the independent variable X1 from x1 to x1 is associated with the difference in two probabilities to obtain a specific educational degree (see Blossfeld, 2018; Rohwer, 2012)” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 4)

“information on parental class, parental education and parental status are combined into a new multidimensional social origin variable (for a detailed description of the construction of this variable see Blossfeld, 2019a). This” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 4)

“takes into account the multidimensionality of how social origin is related to educational outcomes (Bukodi & Goldthorpe, 2013), it avoids the problem of multicolliniarity and overcontrol bias (Blossfeld, 2019a; Grätz, 2019; Marks, 2011; Meraviglia & Buis, 2015), and it takes into account cumulation and compensation of parental social origin resources as well as status inconsistencies (Blossfeld, 2019a).” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 4)

“How is it possible that the proportion of academics rises across cohorts (see Fig. 6), while simultaneously the probabilities for the children from the six social origin groups to obtain a tertiary degree are time-persistent (see Fig. 7 and Table 3)?” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 8)

“At the lower end of the social inequality pyramid, children from ‘Disadvantaged families with low education’ (DISLE) are left behind and have decreased their vocational attainment. Thus, this origin group increasingly remained unskilled after the birth cohort 1966-71. Thus, for these two educational levels, inequality has increased for the most disadvantaged children in the process of educational expansion at least for the youngest birth cohorts.” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 9)

“Moreover, children from the intermediate and higher social origin groups are quite stable in terms of vocational and academic attainment in the process of educational expansion. In” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 9)

“particular, with regard to tertiary education, the dominating picture is persistent inequality.” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 9)

“This conclusion corroborates previous research by Ziefle (2017) who also found persistent inequality for women’s probability to obtain an Abitur” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 9)

“observed an impressive intercohort upgrading in the resources of parents” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 9)

“First, as already suggested by Ziefle (2017): 58) and in the theory section, the four arguments on the rising demand for education are not mutually exclusive” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 9)

“Second, it seems that the status maintenance approach (Breen & Goldthorpe, 1997) explains both (1) the persistence in origin-specific inequality of higher educational attainment across cohorts and (2) the rise in the overall demand in tertiary education across cohorts.” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 9)

“even if the OE associations between consecutive parent-child generations remain stable or are (only slightly) declining over time, the social opportunities of consecutive grandparent – grandchild generations might improve significantly over time.” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 9)

“Fourth, in terms of labour market opportunities previous research for Germany has shown that the increasing number of higher educated individuals across cohorts could be entirely integrated into highly skilled jobs created by the changing occupational structure (Becker & Blossfeld, 2017: 125” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 9)

“sum, this article flags an important issue that has not been often addressed so far, namely, that analyses concerned with changes in educational inequality in the process of educational expansion should take into account the changing composition of social origin.” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 9)

“First, this contribution focused on educational growth from a perspective of the today’s reunited Germany.” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 9)

“Second, this article only focused on the three main educational attainment levels.” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 9)

“Third, the NEPS data allows to include parental education, parental class and parental status in order to measure social origin.” (Blossfeld, 2020, p. 9)