ABSTRACT
The preceding three chapters have put forward theory and evidence to understand the family-level mechanisms that explain why parents’ education matters for the educational success of their children. This focus on intergenerational transfer necessarily places the family as the central focus of interest. However, as has been highlighted throughout these discussions, the family is not the only context within which individuals develop and it is not independent of many other important social environments. The strength of the ecological framework that motivates our own conceptual model for describing the pathways through which education has its effects lies in its emphasis on understanding the individual and his or her development within multiple, interrelated contexts.
