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Reconstructing Prospective Intergenerational Educational Mobility in 12 Countries.

Gordey Yastrebov¹, Vanessa Wittemann¹

¹Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Cologne, Köln, Germany.

|July 17, 2024

Summary

This study examines how women's education and fertility influenced intergenerational educational mobility in Europe. While fertility partially offsets educational inequality, its overall impact is small and declining, with limited cross-country variation.

Keywords:

Educational fertility gradient Educational reproduction Prospective models Sibship size effects Social mobility

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Area of Science:

Sociology
Demography
European Social Studies

Background:

Intergenerational educational mobility is a key indicator of social equality.
Understanding the interplay between fertility patterns and educational attainment is crucial for social policy.
Previous research has not fully captured the prospective nature of educational mobility and fertility's role.

Purpose of the Study:

To reconstruct prospective intergenerational educational mobility for European women.
To investigate the influence of fertility on educational mobility across different inequality contexts.
To compare prospective and retrospective data methods for mobility studies.

Main Methods:

Utilized a novel inferential method combining retrospective (Generations and Gender Survey) and prospective data.
Analyzed data for women born between 1925 and 1950 across 12 European countries.
Assessed the mediating role of sibship size on the fertility-education gradient.

Main Results:

A negative educational fertility gradient was observed, partially compensating for mobility inequalities.
This gradient was most pronounced in high-inequality European contexts.
Fertility's role in educational mobility was found to be small, declining, and did not explain significant country-level differences.

Conclusions:

Fertility's contribution to mitigating educational mobility inequality is limited and diminishing.
Sibship size effects were found to be negligible in mediating the fertility gradient.
Prospective data, when available, provides a more accurate reconstruction of educational mobility rates than retrospective data.