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We aim to bring together two current strands of research into inequalities in individuals' educational attainment that are associated with their social origins: that concerned with the "primary" and "secondary" effects of social origins in creating inequalities, and that concerned with the relation between these inequalities and different components of social origins, taken to represent different forms of parental resources. Our main findings are the following. The secondary effects of social origins—their effects via the educational choices that young people make given their prior academic performance—are clearly operative across five key educational transitions within the English educational system. More specifically, we estimate that 35% of the total effect of social origins is secondary in the earliest transition that we consider, and from 15% to 20% in the subsequent four. Furthermore, mediation analyses reveal that secondary effects are most strongly associated with parental education and then, to a lesser degree with parental status, while little association exists with parental class and none at all with parental income. Primary effects are also at all transitions most strongly associated with parental education and status but in this case both parental class and parental income do retain some importance. We suggest an explanation for our empirical findings as resulting largely from the concern of highly educated, professional parents, and their children to avoid the occurrence of downward intergenerational mobility, especially in terms of education and status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been much recent discussion concerning the conceptual and empirical viability and value of the distinction between social class and social status, and in particular as implemented in the work of Chan and Goldthorpe. The present paper addresses certain of the issues that arise on the basis of a historical case, that of class and status in interwar England, with reference to housing, sports club membership, and dress. It seeks to show that, contrary to what has been claimed by various authors, the distinction can be effectively made and is indeed necessary to an understanding of these features of the social history of the period; that it is differential association that has to be seen as constitutive of status stratification, rather than differences in lifestyle; and that increased status striving, anxieties, and segregation, with adverse psychological consequences, can result from a narrowing as well as from a widening of class inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a reprint of the article "Intergenerational class mobility and the convergence thesis: England, France and Sweden" which is by Robert Erikson, John H. Goldthorpe, and Lucienne Portocarero and was published in this journal in 1979. Social class mobility patterns, unequal social power, life chances, and research methodology in sociology are discussed. Data is given which compares mobility rates for the years 1910 to 1970.

Abstract: In this paper, we use recent survey data on the visual arts in order to test three arguments concerning the relationship between social stratification and cultural consumption: i.e. what we label as the ‘homology’, the ‘individualisation’ and the ‘omnivore–univore’ arguments. Through latent class analysis, we identify three types of consumer in the visual arts—‘omnivores’, ‘paucivores’ and non-consumers or ‘inactives’. We then examine the social character of these types through a regression analysis that includes a range of demographic and stratification variables. As would be expected from a Weberian standpoint, the types are more strongly differentiated by status than by class—or income. Education is still more important than status, although how far it should be interpreted as a stratification variable can be questioned. Our findings reinforce those we have previously reported on cultural consumption in the domains of music and of theatre, dance and cinema in indicating that the homology and individualisation arguments lack empirical support. Further, though, the omnivore–univore argument seems less applicable in the visual arts than in other domains. Univores are not apparent and it is inactives that represent the numerically most important type. Moreover, it is in the distinction between inactives, on the one hand, and omnivores and paucivores together, on the other, that social stratification is most obviously expressed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this article we use recent survey data to test three arguments on the relationship between social stratification and cultural consumption: i.e. what we label as the homology, individualization and omnivore–univore arguments. We note various conceptual and methodological problems in the ways these arguments have been advanced, and stress in particular the importance of maintaining the Weberian distinction between class and status. We concentrate on musical consumption and apply latent class models to identify types of musical consumer. We then examine the social character of these types through a regression analysis that includes a range of demographic and stratification variables. As would be anticipated from a Weberian standpoint, type of musical consumption proves to be more closely associated with status, and also with education, than with class. In general, our results provide little support for the homology or individualisation arguments. They are more consonant with the omnivore–univore argument, although a number of qualifications to this are also suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social class differentials in educational attainment have been extensively studied in numerous countries. In this paper, we begin by examining class differentials in the progression to higher secondary education among 16-year-old children in England and Wales. As has been shown for other countries, the differentials result both from the primary effects of differing levels of academic performance of children of different class background and from the secondary effects of differences in the educational choices that these children make at given levels of performance. Through counterfactual analyses in which the performance distribution of one class is combined with the choice distribution of another, primary and secondary effects are decomposed and the former are shown to be roughly three times the size of the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article provides information on a study which focused on intergenerational class mobility in England, France and Sweden. A major factor creating a cross-national variation was that of historically-determined differences in the class structures of the three societies, most notably the ones associated with the relative sizes of their agricultural sectors and with differing rates of contraction of employment in agriculture in the course of economic development. Awareness of the possibility of structurally induced variations in absolute mobility rates distinguishes the subsequent reformulation of the study. A detailed model was developed of the common pattern of relative mobility rates or of what is termed as social fluidity in England, France and Sweden. It was confirmed that the cross-national differences that were found in absolute rates were overwhelmingly attributable to structural effects rather than to differences existing at the level of relative rates. The model did not achieve a perfect fit and, more importantly, one systematic, national deviation from it was detected. In the Swedish case, generally lower tendencies towards class immobility could be observed than the model would predict.

This article explores the question: can the variation that have been observed in class mobility rates in England, France and Sweden be in fact attributed entirely to differences in the evolution of the class structures of these societies - or in other factors affecting the demand and supply conditions attending mobility; or is it rather the case that there are, in addition to such structural sources of variation, differences also among the three societies in the pattern of what we would term their social fluidity or, in other words, in mobility considered independently of structural influences? To use the conceptual language that has been conventional in mobility research- but from which we would wish to depart -- the issue could then be alternatively posed as that of whether the cross-national variation that we have demonstrated is confined simply to structural mobility, or whether it extends to exchange mobility as well. The source of mobility data in England, France and Sweden have been fully described in previous paper of these authors. Here it will be sufficient to say that the data derive from nationally-based sample survey inquiries undertaken in the three countries during the early 1970s.

This article examines intergenerational class mobility in England, France and Sweden. The starting point of almost all discussions of comparative social mobility rates has been the thesis advanced by Lipset and Zetterberg in 1959 that the overall pattern of social mobility appears to be much the same in the industrial societies of various Western countries. Although Lipset and Zetterberg recognized that the data on which this thesis rested were often of a doubtful quality, they none the less maintained that the reservations and cautious which are in order do nor invalidate such a finding, which a number of other researchers in this area also agree is warranted. Subsequent commentators have in fact been a good deal less sanguine about the possibility of deriving reliable comparative conclusions from the results of the national mobility inquiries that were available to Lipset and Zetterberg. But of perhaps still greater import are the several criticisms that have been leveled against their thesis on primarily conceptual grounds. Lipset and Zetterberg operate for the most part with the simple two-class model, based on the distinction between manual and non-manual occupational groupings.

In this article we start from Boudon's important, but still surprisingly neglected, distinction between 'primary' and 'secondary' effects in the creation of class differentials in educational attainment. Primary effects are all those, whether of a genetic or socio-cultural kind, that are expressed via the association between children's class backgrounds and their actual levels of academic performance. Secondary effects are those that are expressed via the educational choices that children from differing class backgrounds make within the range of choice that their previous performance allows them. We apply a method introduced by Erikson and Jonsson to represent the relationship between primary and secondary effects in analysing class differentials in one crucial transition within the English and Welsh educational system: that which children make at around age 16 and which determines whether or not they will pursue the higher-level academic qualifications - A-levels -- that are usually required for university entry. We then use a development of this method that we have earlier proposed in order to produce quantitative estimates of the relative importance of primary and secondary effects as they operate within this transition. We show that secondary effects reinforce primary effects to a substantial extent, accounting for at least one quarter, and possibly up to one-half, of class differentials as measured by odds ratios. In conclusion, we consider some theoretical and policy implications of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]