- The effects of earning are higher for college entry than for high school continuation.
- Social background matters more for college entry than for high school completion.
- The factors that determine whether students continue schooling also determine where in the stratified curriculum that schooling will occur.
- Evidence suggests that declining dependence on parents does not explain the pattern of social background effects on educational transitions.
- Study founds important social background effects operating even before the college entry transition.
- Found that social background advantages consistently serve to “move” children from disadvantageous discrete locations to advantageous ones. Thus, even though the increment for social background effects may be small, the authors observed it to be effective.
- Findings lend credence to the postulation that even though high school completion is nearly universal, high school remains an important site of competition in which social background matters.
- IN high school social background appears to matter for the kind of education received rather than for high school completion.
- Results show that social background continues to matter even in the presence of universal access to institutions is unlikely to undo the effective power of social resources indexed by common indicators of social background, at least in the United States.
- Study finds consequential effects of social background in each year studied. This suggests that the effects of social background occur in at least two ways: (1) they determine who completes a level of education if completion of that level is not nearly universal, and (2) they determine the kind of education persons will receive within levels of education that are nearly universal. Either way, social background advantages seem to work to effectively and continuously secure for the children of advantage advantaged locations of their own.