ABSTRACT

This chapter analyzes the character of the interaction of education in the mobility/reproduction process. Traditionally, the educational system has been regarded as a “social lift” by which children from less privileged circumstances could transcend their origins and aspire to more advantageous social positions. When treating education as an individual resource for future class position, especially in the labor market, it is reasonable to assume that its credential value is the most important. If an association is strong in the left column but weak in the right, it is presumably due to differences in educational attainment among social classes. Social selection in school becomes less salient with the emergence of mass education and with urbanization and generally raised standards of living. In order to paint a more interpretable and less complicated picture of the changes, education has been recoded into two categories: upper secondary school or higher, and lower secondary school or lower.