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A Detailed Examination of the Role of Education in Intergenerational Social-class Mobility

Nuffield College, New Road, Oxford OX1 1NF, UK. Herman.Werfhorst{at}nuffield.oxford.ac.uk

This article analyses the role of education, particularly fields of study, in intergenerational class mobility in the Netherlands. In highly educated societies, children of all social classes need to invest in education to avoid downward mobility. We argue that members of the various social classes aim primarily for class maintenance, and apply educational strategies to realize this aim. Children of manual working-class families tend to prefer technical fields of study, in order to reach at least their parents' social class or probably even higher. Children of the self-employed or of small employers need financial and commercial skills to be able to take over the business. Children from farming backgrounds benefit from agricultural training in getting to work on a farm themselves. These strategies equip them with valuable types of skills and knowledge, even if they drop out of school early. Children of service-class origins tend to opt for general types of training at secondary school, and prestigious fields like law and medicine in tertiary education. Empirical results of analyses on two Dutch nationally representative surveys (N = 1566 men) generally support these claims. Because of these rather conservative strategies, relatively low mobility rates are found, which impedes upward mobility of working-class children.

Key Words: Education • Field of study • Social class • Social mobility • The Netherlands

Social Science Information, Vol. 41, No. 3, 407-438 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/0539018402041003004


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