Transmission of Advantage in Liberal, Conservative, and Social Democratic Welfare Regimes

• In Event: 207 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 18. Variation in the Transmission of Status

Abstract

Esping-Andersen’s (1990) theory of the welfare state describes many characteristics of liberal, conservative, and social democratic welfare regimes, including typical stratification patterns and social policies for each type. However, there is no discussion of regime type’s relation to the transmission of advantage from parent to child. The sociology of education literature also gives little attention to welfare regime type and its effects on student outcomes. I address these gaps in the literature by asking how regime type affects the degree to which parental advantage is transferred to children. Specifically, I look at the effect of socioeconomic status on academic achievement in each regime. The United States, Germany and Sweden represent ideal types of liberal, conservative, and social democratic regimes, respectively. I discuss each country’s school system and how its structure and characteristics relate to the corresponding regime type. For my analysis, I use the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment’s (PISA) to assess the degree to which parental socioeconomic status predicts student achievement at age fifteen. When I compare the findings from my regression analyses of each country, I find that there is little variation in the magnitude of socioeconomic status’s effect on achievement. Examining each country’s Gini index, however, tells a very different story about stratification, which is more aligned with Esping-Andersen’s initial theory. To reconcile the inconsistency between the measures of transmission of advantage and overall inequality, I propose exploring the role played by cultural capital, social networks and school nonparticipation in my findings.

Author

• Catherine Doren, University of Wisconsin-Madison