Re-Assessing the Role of Cultural Capital in Educational Mobility

• In Event: 20420 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 3: Cultural Capital and Taste

Abstract

Dominant theories of intergenerational social mobility expect social class to be reproduced through the transmission of cultural capital. Though rates of intergenerational mobility have indeed slowed in the United States in recent decades, there is still substantial movement of individuals within the class structure. Examining differences in parent and child educational attainment, or educational mobility, is crucial to understanding broader processes of intergenerational social mobility. There is substantial movement within educational attainment: about a third of individuals whose parents have at least one college degree do not attain their own college degree, and roughly a third of individuals whose parents do not have a college degree eventually attain one. I analyze data from the National Study of Youth and Religion to further explore the role of cultural capital transmission in the process of educational mobility.

Author

• Andrew David Joyce, Duke University