The Role of Parental Wealth in Children’s Educational Pathways in Germany

Abstract

In this article, I evaluate whether educational attainment in Germany is stratified by parental wealth and at which transitions stratification emerges. I propose a four-stage model to capture the emergence of stratification in the German education system, which is characterized by early between-school tracking: (i) transition to the tracked secondary school, (ii) attended track in the last year of mandatory schooling, (iii) highest school-leaving certificate, and (iv) transition to vocational or tertiary education. Results suggest that stratification by parental wealth emerges at all four stages, and, therefore, accumulates over the stages. Children living in wealthy households are 20 per cent more likely to attend the highest track in fifth grade and to obtain the highest school-leaving certificate and are 40 per cent more likely to enroll in tertiary education compared to children at the bottom of the wealth distribution. Furthermore, parental wealth seems to be particularly effective in preventing negative outcomes like leaving school without a certificate or not finding a fully qualifying vocational training. Among those who do not obtain the formal requirements to enroll in tertiary education, those with wealthy parents are more likely to start dual vocational training.

Purchasing Behavior, Setting, Pricing, Family: Determinants of School Lunch Participation

“…These differences are confirmed by other studies [5,6,37] and can generally be explained by students gaining autonomy over their food choices as they get older, and thus deciding for or against school lunch participation. Lowest participation rates in lower secondary schools might reflect the higher proportions of low SES in these institutions as other surveys showed nonparticipation and meal skipping were more prevalent among low SES groups [38][39][40][41][42]. Indeed, regardless of the school type the participation was lower among children with low SES.…”

What can parents do? The causal mediating role of parenting in explaining SES differences in children's language development

“…These factors may also moderate the effects of education, with differences in their impact. There is some research on the effect of socio-occupational class, but household income has been shown to be of little relevance (Berger, Paxson, and Waldfogel 2009), and recent studies suggest wealth may have an important independent, additive effect (Dräger 2022). However, when children are born, they experience all the dimensions of their mother and father's SES simultaneously, not just one dimension at a time, so it is difficult to try to separate them (Bihagen and Lambert 2018).…”

Wealth in Couples: Introduction to the Special Issue

“…Likewise, for people in pension systems facing demographic challenges, the re-marketisation of the provision has made it even more important to accumulate private wealth (Ebbinghaus, 2015 ). There is also mounting evidence that the intergenerational transmission of wealth is (increasingly) contributing to the persistence of advantages and disadvantages in the next generation (Dräger, 2021 ; Hällsten & Pfeffer, 2017 ; Pfeffer, 2018 ).…”