Understanding the mobility chances of children from working-class backgrounds in Britain: How important are cognitive ability and locus of control?

Research in social stratification has shown that children from working-class backgrounds tend to obtain substantially lower levels of educational attainment and lower labor market positions than children from higher social class backgrounds. However, we still know relatively little about the micro-level processes that account for this empirical regularity. Our study examines the roles of two individual-level characteristics—cognitive ability and locus of control—in mediating the effect of individuals’ parental class background on their educational attainment and social class position in Britain. We find that cognitive ability mediates only about 35% of the total parental class effect on educational attainment and only about 20% of the total parental class effect on respondents’ social class position, net of their educational attainment. These findings contradict existing claims that differences in the life chances of children from different social class backgrounds are largely due to differences in cognitive ability. Moreover, we find that although individuals’ locus of control plays some role in mediating the parental class effect, its role is substantially smaller than the mediating role of cognitive ability. We measure individuals’ social class positions at different points in their careers—at labor market entry and at occupational maturity—and find that the mediating roles of cognitive ability and locus of control are remarkably stable across individuals’ working lives.     

Are postgraduate qualifications the ‘new frontier of social mobility’?

We investigate the relationship between social origin, postgraduate degree attainment, and occupational outcomes across five British age‐group cohorts. We use recently‐available UK Labour Force Survey data to conduct a series of logistic regressions of postgraduate (masters or doctorate) degree attainment among those with first degrees, with controls for measures of degree classification, degree subject, age, gender, ethnicity and national origin. We find a marked strengthening of the effect of class origin on degree‐ and occupational attainment across age cohorts. While for older generations there is little or no difference by class origin in the rates at which first‐degree graduates attain postgraduate degrees, those with working‐class‐origins in the youngest age‐group are only about 28 per cent as likely to obtain a postgraduate degree when compared with their peers from privileged origins. Moreover, social origin matters more for occupational destination, even among those with postgraduate degrees, for those in younger age groups. These findings demonstrate the newly important, and increasing, role of postgraduate degrees in reproducing socio‐economic inequality in the wake of the substantial expansion of undergraduate and postgraduate education. Our findings lend some support to the Maximally Maintained Inequality thesis, suggesting that gains in equality of access to first‐degrees are indeed at risk from postgraduate expansion.     

Social origin,field of study and graduates’ career progression: does social inequality vary across fields?

Research on stratification and mobility has consistently shown that in the UK there is a direct impact of social origin on occupational destination net of educational attainment even for degree‐holders. However, only a few studies applied a longitudinal and dynamic perspective on how intergenerational mobility shapes graduates’ working careers. Using multilevel growth curve modelling and data from the 1970 British cohort study (BCS70), we contribute to this research by looking at the emergence of social inequalities during the first ten years since labour market entry. We further distinguish between graduates of different fields of study as we expect social disparities to develop differently due to differences in initial occupational placement and upward mobility processes. We find that parental class does not affect occupational prestige over and above prior achievement. Separate analyses by the field of study show that initial differences in occupational prestige and career progression do not differ between graduates from different classes of origin in STEM fields, and arts and humanities. It is only in the social sciences that working‐class graduates start with lower occupational prestige but soon catch up with their peers from higher classes. Overall, our results indicate no direct effect of social origin on occupational attainment for degree‐holders once we broaden our focus to a dynamic life course perspective.     

Class,Family, Education,and the Process of Status Attainment: A Comparison of American and British Women College Graduates*

Turner's conceptualization of the relationship between education and social mobility in Great Britain and the United States as forming “sponsored” and “contest” systems is used as a theoretical framework for comparing the process of occupational status attainment of British and American women college graduates. British women graduates are more occupationally mobile than Americans; they gain more from attending prestigious institutions, studying science and mathematics and securing a higher class degree as compared with American women with similar qualifications. American graduate women benefit more from attaining a Ph.D. Marriage and motherhood have less significant, but different, cross-national effects.     

Economic Outcomes among Latino Migrants to Spain and the United States: Differences by Source Region and Legal Status

Using representative national surveys, this paper compares economic outcomes among Latin American migrants to Spain and the United States in the first cross-national comparison using quantitative data. Considering the geographic location and social proximity of each country with respect to Latin America, we detect a critical selection effect whereby the majority of Latin American migrants to Spain originate in South America from middle class backgrounds, whereas most migrants to the United States are Central Americans of lower class origins. This selection effect accounts for cross-national differences in the probability of employment, occupational attainment, and wages earned. Despite differences in the origins and characteristics of Latino immigrants to each country, demographic and human and social capital factors appear to operate similarly in both places; and when models are estimated separately by legal status, we find that effects are more accentuated for undocumented compared with documented migrants, especially in the United States.     

Immigrant Bilingualism in Spain: An Asset or a Liability?

This study contributes to the ongoing debate about bilingual advantage and examines whether bilingual immigrant youths fare better, as well as, or worse academically than the matching group of monolinguals. Using data from Spain, where close to half of immigrants speak Spanish as their native language, we found no evidence of costs of bilingualism: bilingual youths did benefit from their linguistic skills. Their advantage, however, manifested itself not uniformly across discrete outcomes, but in a direct trajectory toward higher educational attainment. Bilingualism neutralized the possible negative effect of ethnic origins and extended the positive effect of high parental ambition. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Religion and attitudes towards nature in Britain

Religious institutions have been identified as important conduits in shaping social attitudes toward nature and the environment. Using Lynn White's historical thesis that Judeo-Christianity has cherished the domination of nature ('dominion' belief) by humans as our frame of reference, this article examines the impact of religion, specifically Abrahamic and Judeo-Christian beliefs, on environmental attitudes in Britain. Based on the 1993 British Social Attitudes Survey, a nationally representative sample of the adult population in Britain, the multivariate results of this paper suggest that: (a) there is no significant difference between Christians and non-Christians concerning environmental attitudes; (b) Roman Catholics are the most sceptic toward nature among Christian denominations; and (c) irrespective of religious identification, the two most notable and consistent factors in determining pro-dominion attitudes in Britain are educational attainment and particularly levels of scientific knowledge about the natural environment.     

Class and ambition in the status attainment process: A Spanish replication

There are two principal theoretical schools that seek to explain status outcomes in early adulthood: those focusing on intergenerational transmission of class privilege and those emphasizing individual characteristics, particularly ambition. The first may be called the structuralist school and the second the psycho‐social school, following the Wisconsin Model of Status Attainment. A second structuralist perspective, Segmented Assimilation, highlights transmission of socio‐economic status across immigrant generations, but emphasizes the positive role of co‐ethnic resources for upward mobility and preventing downward assimilation. We examine these alternative predictions using a large longitudinal sample of youths in Spain that includes both children of native parentage and children of immigrants. Spain possesses characteristics that make it uniquely suitable to examine these predictions. Results show that both family socio‐economic status and ambition, measured by adolescent educational aspirations and expectations, play important roles in educational and occupational attainment, but the influence of family status persists even after controlling for ambition. The influence of co‐ethnic nationalities disappears after these controls, except among Chinese and Filipino youths, a result consistent with segmented assimilation. Predictive models of status attainment yield identical results for children of immigrants and children of natives, indicating that in Spain, they have become part of a common youth universe. Theoretical and practical implications of the analysis are discussed.     

From Multiracial Subjects to Multicultural Citizens: Social Stratification and Ethnic and Racial Classification among Children of Immigrants in the United Kingdom

This study examines how immigrant parents’ geographic origins correspond to their adult children's ethnic and racial self‐classification; whether discrepancies are associated with socioeconomic status; and the implications of these patterns for assessing socioeconomic inequality. Using linked British census data, we identify immigrants’ children in 1971 and examine how they ethnically/racially self‐classify in 2001. We find that fluidity in classification varies across groups, but higher educational attainment is consistently associated with less white British classification. Therefore, grouping immigrants’ children by ethnic/racial self‐classification underestimates socioeconomic disadvantage for these groups. However, grouping by parental birthplace overlooks variation in racialization and disadvantage among children of immigrants from the same country of origin.     

Testing the modernization hypothesis and the socialist ideology hypothesis: a comparative sibling analysis of educational attainment and occupational status

In this study, we present a comparative sibling analysis. This enables us to test two major social mobility hypotheses, i.e. the modernization hypothesis and the socialist ideology hypothesis. We employ survey data on brothers in England, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, Spain, and the USA, covering a historical period from 1916 till 1990. Results show that the effects of parental social class on educational attainment are smaller in technologically advanced societies, and that the effects of parental social class on occupational status are smaller in social-democratic and communist societies. In addition, the total family impact on occupational status declines with modernization. But overall, we observe that the family of origin has not lost its importance for its sons' educational attainment and occupational status yet.     

Political Ambition Among Black and White Women:

A two stage socialization model is used to analyze ambition among black and white women who are active in party politics. It is hypothesized that learning or activities considered atypical for women will stimulate ambition among women, but that patterns of significant factors may vary across races. The general hypothesis is sustained, although the staged model is given only marginal support. The ambition of white women is linked to nontraditional sex role beliefs, while black women's ambitious linked to current activities and the existence of parental interest in politics. Both sets of ambitious women report atypical sex role education in their backgrounds.     

Occupational mobility and cognitive ability: A commentary on Betthäuser,Bourne and Bukodi

This commentary critiques Betthäuser, Bourne and Bukodi's (2020) paper which finds that cognitive ability does not substantially mediate class of origin effects on educational and occupational outcomes. From these results, they conclude that cognitive ability is only of minor importance for social stratification, reasserting their view of the primacy of class origins for social stratification. The central issue surrounding cognitive ability in social stratification is its effects on socioeconomic attainments vis-à-vis socioeconomic origins, not the extent that cognitive ability mediates classorigin effects. Their analytical strategy of estimating the extent that cognitive ability mediates class origineffects is misleading because: it ignores the only moderate associations of socioeconomic origins with educational and occupational outcomes; the stronger direct effects of cognitive ability; the associations of parents’ ability with their own socioeconomic attainments; and the genetic transmission of cognitive ability and other traits relevant to social stratification from parents to their children.     

Breaking New Ground: Diverse Routes to College in Rural America*

Abstract Rural communities pose a challenge to status attainment models that explain children's educational attainment primarily in terms of the parents' education and professional status. Alongside the rural professional class are farmers of similar social status but with less education and other families that lack the status and resources of both professional‐class and farm families. The prolonged agricultural crisis in the American Midwest has turned rural youths toward college and has raised questions about the educational value of resources provided by farm parents and other rural parents. We classified youths from the Iowa Youth and Families Project into three SES groups: professional‐managerial, farm, and lower‐status. We compared these groups on resource levels and on the extent to which the resources predicted enrollment in a four‐year college one year after high school. Findings indicated three distinct routes to four‐year college. Professional‐managerial youths tended to follow the traditional path from parents' educational and other resources and support to their own academic involvement and aspirations for higher education. Successful farm youths, in lieu of parental educational advantages, drew on parents' community ties. Resourceful lower‐status youths, in the absence of family background advantages, generated educational attainment through early educational ambition and varied community and school involvements. Even relatively low levels of involvement were valuable to these youths' educational attainment.     

Cultural transmission,educational attainment and social mobility

This paper examines the relationship between cultural socialisation, educational attainment and intergenerational social mobility. Picking up on debates about the transmission of cultural capital and social advantage, we use data from the Taking Part Survey of England to analyse how far socialisation into cultural activities and encouragement play a role in educational attainment, intergenerational mobility and in the reproduction of class. This survey has unprecedented data on whether respondents had been taken to museums/art galleries, theatre/dance/classical music performances, sites of historic interest, and libraries when they were growing up. This is buttressed by information on how much parents or other adults encouraged the respondents to read books or to be creatively active in different domains of the arts, literature and music. Using these rich measures of childhood socialisation, we can show that part of the effect of parental class on educational attainment is due to the transmission of this kind of cultural capital. Moreover, this transmission also has a direct effect on the level of educational attainment. In a similar fashion, respondents who have experienced a higher intensity of cultural socialisation are more likely to be upwardly mobile, and likewise, cultural transmission has a positive effect on the prevention of downward mobility among service class children. These results are discussed in the light of current issues in British mobility research and its treatment of cultural aspects of class and mobility.     

家庭背景、体制转型与中国农村精英的代际传承(1978-1996)

使用一个1996年收集的全国抽样数据,并结合事件史分析方法(离散时间风险模型),本文探讨了1978年中国农村经济体制改革后,到底是哪些农民能够抓住机会实现经济上的成功并成为农村中的精英阶层。本研究具体检验了中国农村居民的精英职业地位获得是如何受到他们改革前或解放前的家庭背景影响的。数据分析结果表明:第一,旧式精英(解放前的政治或经济精英)和新式精英(解放后再分配经济时期的政治或经济精英)家庭背景的农民,改革后进入非农职业的机率都比较高。第二,在不同历史阶段,精英职业获得模式是不同的。低风险性是导致改革早期新、旧精英的后代的选择趋同的主要原因,反映了他们在对社会经济发展走向无法清晰把握时的一种选择理性,而改革后期他们非农化道路的分野则充分体现了个体的社会行动是如何受其家庭背景(或精英文化因素)影响的。基于这些发现,作者提出精英文化的代际传承观点,指出除了当前学界讨论较多的权力和人力资本因素之外,文化因素也是转型期中国农村社会分层的重要作用机制。     

EARLY FACTORS LEADING TO COLLEGE GRADUATION FOR ASIANS AND NON-ASIANS IN THE UNITED STATES

This article explores factors that lead Asian Americans, both as a group and as subgroups, to obtain a college degree in comparison to members of other racial/ethnic groups in the United States. Using data from the 2000 wave of the National Education Longitudinal Study, we find that the effects of race on educational attainment virtually disappear once individual and family factors are controlled. However, there is significant heterogeneity in college attainment among Asian Americans. In addition, we find that the effects of socioeconomic status, parental expectations, eighth-grade grade point average, and family structure are generally weaker for Asian Americans relative to non-Asians while parental immigrant status and standardized test scores are stronger. Asians appear to be "protected" from many of the usual factors that negatively affect educational outcomes while receiving an enhanced benefit from being of an immigrant family.     

Horns and dilemmas: Jewish evacuees in Britain during the second world war

Although only a short‐lived experience, evacuation during the Second World War has left a profound impact on millions of people in Britain. In some ways British Jewry shared the common problems of evacuation created by class differences and a fundamental clash between town and country. Nevertheless, Jews, because of their particular religious needs and a strong tradition of anti‐Semitism in Britain, had unique experiences as evacuees during the war. Indeed evacuation had a profound importance for the shaping of post‐war British Jewry ‐ scarring those who suffered anti‐Semitic hostility but also assimilating many at the cost of their religious and cultural identity.     

The Current State of Social Mobility Research*

Blau's and Duncan's reconceptualization of social mobility analysis in terms of the status attainment model led to a rapid growth in the number of studies of mobility processes in the United States. Observations of differences in the attainment processes of different segments of the population and theoretical and methodological critiques have produced alternative ways of viewing and analyzing social stratification and mobility. Recent European contributions have tended to be more heavily theory-laden and concerned with social class rather than a continuum of occupational levels. Current developments promise to provide a basis for a rapprochement between the two approaches and further clarification of the relative importance of structural and individual factors in the social mobility process.     

Pathways from origins to destinations: Stability and change in the roles of cognition,private schools and educational attainment

While much attention has been devoted to measuring levels of social mobility over time, less attention has been given to the possibility of changing pathways to social mobility. This paper examines pathways from social origins to socio-economic destinations in midlife for two British cohorts, born in 1958 and 1970 respectively, using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). We address the roles of cognitive attainment, private schooling and educational attainment in mediating the link between social origins and destinations. Have these mechanisms become more or less important over time, in a context of structural change in the state schooling system and educational expansion? We find that private schools displayed greater academic selectivity and an increased link to high levels of educational attainment for the younger cohort. Essentially, private schools adapted to changing circumstances, becoming more academically selective and less socially selective, and more focused on educational credentials. Childhood social origins were less strongly linked to childhood cognitive scores in the younger cohort, but cognitive scores were also more weakly linked to educational attainment for this cohort. We also find a decreased association between social origins and educational attainment for the younger cohort. While the finding that educational inequalities weakened over this time period is positive, the lack of a corresponding reduction in the overall link between social origins and destinations suggests that reducing educational inequalities was not sufficient to increase social mobility when accompanied by countervailing changes in the role of private schools.     

Reflections on the meritocracy debate in Britain: a response to Richard Breen and John Goldthorpe

A paper by Breen and Goldthorpe recently claimed to have exposed 'fatal flaws' in my work on meritocracy in Britain. This paper responds to their criticisms. The results of their re-analysis of the NCDS data set are shown to be consistent with my earlier findings and arguments. Furthermore, re-running some of my earlier models using measures that they favour and a method designed to privilege their position, the results once again demonstrate that, while class origins have some effect on class destinations (in particular, for those born into the middle class), ability and effort exert a much greater effect. Based on these results, the paper identifies three core propositions about meritocracy in Britain on which all parties to this debate should now be able to agree.