Institutional change and parental compensation in intergenerational attainment

Abstract

Previous research has shown how institutional changes, such as educational expansion, have weakened parental influence on educational attainment. We extend this analysis to occupational attainment and put forth a parental compensation hypothesis: as the origin-education (OE) association weakens, parents act to compensate for this in order to maintain their influence on the child's occupational attainment. We should see this as a strengthened origin-destination association net of education (net OD). Further, we study whether these compensatory actions are triggered by changes in educational institutions and whether the institutional changes that reduce educational inequality are the same ones that prompt parental compensation. We have linked data from five waves of the European Social Survey (2002-10) with data on educational institutions matched to birth cohorts born 1941-80 in 25 countries. We find weakened OE and strengthened net OD associations, supporting our parental compensation hypothesis. Multilevel mixed effects regression analyses reveal that reforms lengthening compulsory education, and the increased access to and the attainment of higher education have had a positive influence on parental compensation. As a conclusion, a later school leaving age seems to secure increased parental influence on children's occupational attainment, while parents seem to have reacted to a lesser extent on the changes in higher education.

Skills, parental background, and changes in educational institutions

“…On the other hand, we did not find that institutional changes having a positive direct effect on skills would lead to a growing direct effect of parental background on them. This is in contrast with the previous results on socioeconomic attainment in Europe (Pöyliö et al, 2018), and suggests that in the case of the socioeconomic attainment, the parents perhaps have a broader array of methods for influencing their children's attainment than they do in the case of skill development. Rather, it seems that both prolonging education and increasing tertiary education has effectively compensated for the skill deficiencies stemming from the family background among the children of the loweducated parents.…”

“…The reforms covered in the indicator were limited to those aiming at removing educational dead-ends. In the previous literature (e.g., Pöyliö et al, 2018), this type of reform is often linked with the reduced importance of family background in educational attainment. It may be that the effects of removing dead-ends in skills have simply not been considered sufficiently when reform policies are implemented if the focus has been in improving the accessibility of education.…”

“…Education is seen as a great equalizer that ensures equal opportunities to achieve the occupational position, regardless of gender, social background and ethnic origin (Bernardi and Ballarino, 2016a). However, despite the openness, literature from recent decades (Bernardi and Ballarino, 2016a;Breen and Goldthorpe, 2001;Goldthorpe, 2003;Hout, 1988;Pöyliö et al, 2018) consistently shows the same results: individuals from advantaged families still achieve higher socioeconomic statuses than others in all known societies. The level of equality of opportunity also varies by the level of education.…”

“…Because of this, we should expect the following: Following Liu, we should nonetheless expect that institutional changes have an impact on the association between origin and the observed skills as well. Many educational reforms, such as removing the dead-ends in the pathways to higher education and raising the age of compulsory school, aimed explicitly at being more inclusive by family background (Brunello et al, 2009;Brunello and Checchi, 2007;Checchi and van de Werfhorst, 2018;Pfeffer, 2008;Pöyliö et al, 2018). While these changes reduced the importance of family background on educational attainment, in particular the association between family background and tertiary education (covered by association B in Figure 2), it is likely that at the same time, they also reduced the importance of social background on skills (association A in Figure 1), net of education, by leading to increasing the overall level of skills, in particular among those from low-educated family backgroun ds (cf.…”

“…For example, children who are not successful at school receive extra parental support and have second opportunities (Bernardi and Ballarino, 2016a). Further, parents react in the same way to the changes in educational institutions; when the importance of social origin in educational attainment is reduced with institutional changes, parents try to find ways to increase the importance of family background in other ways (Pöyliö et al, 2018). A similar compensatory effect may be associated with the institutional changes that influence the association between skills and social background.…”