Equality of opportunity through education? A research to the differences in obtaining future cultural, social and economic capital through education between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Abstract

Introduction: Education stimulates social mobility from students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. In contemporary society, due to social policies, people are given the opportunity to follow an education, which is less determined by someone’s socioeconomic background. As a result, more and more people are highly educated, leading into an opportunity trap (Fishman, Ludgate & Tutak, 2017). As a consequence, it remains unanswered whether education is a means of stimulating social mobility. In this study, the contribution of education on the change of someone’s socioeconomic status (SES) will be examined. Bourdieu’s concepts of capital (i.e., cultural, social and economic) will be used as an indication of SES. Resulting in the following question: To what extent does education contribute to the differences in obtaining future cultural, social and economic capital? Methods: The data used for this study comes from the LISS panel and the sample for this study consisted of 261 participants. A quantitative research method is used to analyse the data. Results: It is indicated that education does not show an interaction effect on the relationship of relative change from someone’s starting capital towards someone’s ending capital. Starting capital, however, does show a significant result in the relative increase of that capital. Discussion: Although, no effects of education on capital change were found, this study did show that your starting capital is an important factor in capital development. It appears that when you start with relatively more capital, you also end up with relatively more capital compared to others. This research has shown that there are mutual differences in the possession of capital and that these differences continue to exist later on. This applies for social and economic capital, but not for cultural capital.