The extent to which siblings resemble each other measures the omnibus impact of family background on life chances. We study sibling similarity in cognitive skills, school grades, and educational attainment in Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We also compare sibling similarity by parental education and occupation within these societies. … Read more
Sibling similarity in education across and within societies
Editorial: Introduction to “Mechanisms of educational stratification”
A large body of literature has been devoted to the question of how the design of educational systems influences the formation and intergenerational reproduction of social inequality. An important feature of educational systems is their level of educational stratification or differentiation, i.e. the separation of students into separate groups, tracks or streams for instructional purposes … Read more
Association of proximal elements of social disadvantage with children’s language development at 2 years: an analysis of data from the Children in Focus (CiF) sample from the ALSPAC birth cohort
Background An association between social disadvantage and early language development is commonly reported in the literature, but less attention has been paid to the way that different aspects of social disadvantage affect both expressive and receptive language in the first 2 years of life. Aims To examine the contributions of gender, parental report of early … Read more
Like parents, like children. Does the stratification of education systems moderate the direct effect of origins on destinations?
Using data from the European Social Survey, this study asks if selective education systems can moderate the effects of our origins on later success in the labor market while controlling for education. It finds no effect, regardless of the extent to which selection is based on the student’s abilities. The sample consists of nearly 40,000 … Read more
Parental age in relation to offspring’s neurodevelopment
Objective: Advanced parenthood increases the risk of severe neurodevelopmental disorders like autism, Down syndrome and schizophrenia. Does advanced parenthood also negatively impact offspring’s general neurodevelopment? Method: We analyzed child-, father-, mother- and teacher-rated attention-problems (N= 38,024), and standardized measures of intelligence (N = 10,273) and educational achievement (N = 17,522) of children from four Dutch population-based cohorts. The … Read more
Social disparities in the vocabulary of 2-year-old children and the mediating effect of language-stimulating interaction behavior
It is well documented that children’s language skills already vary by socioeconomic status by the time they are about 2-3 years old. In addition, study results demonstrate that the frequency of language-stimulating interaction behavior – as an important aspect of the proximal familial learning environment – significantly predicts children’s later language skills. However, it is … Read more
What impacts early language skills? Effects of social disparities and different process characteristics of the home learning environment in the first 2 years
It is well documented that the language skills of preschool children differ substantially and that these differences are highly predictive of their later academic success and achievements. Especially in the early phases of children’s lives, the importance of different structural and process characteristics of the home learning environment (HLE) has been emphasized and research results … Read more
Gestational age, parent education, and education in adulthood
BACKGROUND Adults born preterm (<37 weeks) have lower educational attainment than those born term. Whether this relationship is modified by family factors such as socioeconomic background is, however, less well known. We investigated whether the relationship between gestational age and educational attainment in adulthood differed according to parents’ educational level in 4 Nordic countries. METHODS … Read more
Deepening our understanding on the ways in which social origins shape our lives
Family background influences our lives in multiple ways: from genes to work-life connections, the role that parents can play in their children’s lives is almost ubiquitous. Yet these relationships are far from deterministic. Institutional contexts shape the strength and manner in which the influences take place. Even the way that genes shape our lives depends … Read more
From social origin to selective high school courses: Ability grouping as a mechanism of securing social advantage in Israeli secondary education
This paper focuses on ability grouping in middle school as an important mechanism enabling students with privileged social backgrounds to increase their likelihood of enrollment in the most selective and prestigious high school programs, thus paving the way to higher academic degrees and more lucrative occupations. Using data from Israeli national standardized tests administered in … Read more