Educational Stratification and Social Mobility: A Cohort Analysis

• In Event: Social Mobility and Economic Preferences

Abstract

The impact of educational institutions in shaping social mobility is the object of an intensive interdisciplinary debate. Existing work disagrees on whether education, and its institutional stratification in particular, actually contributes to social mobility, as well as on the effect of specific stratification reforms. While most authors agree that lower degrees of both differentiation (the tracking of pupils into different educational paths) and hierarchy (the hierarchical arrangement of these paths) are linked to increase social mobility, others disagree. In both cases, findings are largely based on designs that link cross-country variation or within-country over-time variation of single reform types, such as tracking (differentiation) or minimum leaving age (hierarchy), to the educational attainment of students with different background. Historically and conceptually, however, hierarchy and differentiation are not independent reforms. Their interaction defines the stratification of post-war educational institutions and, rhetorically, they are often cast as either complements or substitutes.
This paper therefore considers these two dimensions of educational stratification together, asking: to what extent do policies of differentiation and hierarchy contribute to the intergenerational association between parental background and educational attainment? We answer this question drawing on a novel Educational Stratification Index. Drawing on a conceptual measure of stratification, the index systematically codes over-time variation in both the differentiation and hierarchy of secondary education in 17 Western European democracies from 1945 onwards.

We then connect these patterns to both experienced social mobility and preferences using the combined 2002-2018 European Social Survey. Our analysis shows little evidence that more differentiation is associated with a stronger relationship between parental background and educational attainment, controlling for hierarchy. However, we find educational hierarchy is associated with lower attainment among children of less advantaged parents.
We then link these findings to different perceptions of educational fairness, showing that differentiation per se only has a weak affect on these perceptions.
The results suggest that education reform does play a role in shaping social mobility, and potentially downstream towards educational fairness, but only when educational

Authors

• Daniel McArthur, University of Oxford

• Anja Giudici, University of Zurich

• Jane R. Gingrich, University of Oxford