Education, Social Background and Cognitive Ability

The decline of the social

Gary N. Marks

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135017859
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Are socioeconomic inequalities in education declining? Is socioeconomic background becoming less important for people's occupational class or status? How important is cognitive ability for education and later occupational outcomes? How do countries differ in the importance of socioeconomic background for education and work?

Gary N. Marks argues that in western industrialized countries, pervasive views that socioeconomic background (or class background) has strong and unchanging relationships with education and later socioeconomic outcomes, resistant to policy and social change, are unfounded. Marks provides a large amount of evidence from many countries showing that the influence of socioeconomic background for education is moderate and most often declining, and socioeconomic background has only very weak impacts on adults' occupation and earnings after taking into account education and cognitive ability.

Furthermore, Marks shows that cognitive ability is a more powerful influence than socioeconomic background for educational outcomes, and that in addition to its indirect effects through education has a direct effect on occupation and earnings. Its effects cannot be dismissed as simply another aspect of socioeconomic background, nor do the usual criticisms of 'cognitive ability' apply. The declining effects for socioeconomic background and the importance of cognitive ability support several of the contentions of modernization theory.

The book contributes to a variety of debates within sociology: quantitative and qualitative approaches, explanatory and non-explanatory theory, the relationship between theory and empirical research, the role of political ideology in research, sociology as a social science, and sociology's contribution to knowledge about contemporary societies. It will appeal to professionals in the fields of education and sociology as well as postgraduate students and academics involved in the debate.

Chapter 1
Introduction

There is a widely held set of inter-related views – among professional social scientists, journalists, policymakers, bureaucrats, social commentators and other educated publics – that socioeconomic background largely determines educational and subsequent occupational and economic outcomes in contemporary Western societies. Differences between students or schools in test scores, overall student performance, early school leaving, entry to university or college and overall educational attainment are mainly due to socioeconomic background. This explains why there is so little intergenerational mobility in Western countries. Relatedly, the status or socioeconomic level of people’s occupations has a close association with that of their father or family of origin. Similarly, inequalities in earnings, income and wealth mainly reflect economic and social inequalities in the parental generation. These understandings feed into political debates about what policies should be implemented to create a fairer society.

There is also a pervasive misunderstanding that cognitive ability is irrelevant to education and subsequent socioeconomic inequalities. There is a variety of arguments: the concept is somehow invalid; there is no such thing as cognitive ability; there are multiple intelligences; IQ tests measure nothing of any more consequence than performance in IQ tests; cognitive ability is simply not important for educational and adult labor market outcomes; or that its apparent importance is simply a reflection of socioeconomic background. Furthermore, the very concept of ability, it is argued, perpetuates socioeconomic inequalities through the propagation of false meritocratic ideologies. In contrast, non-cognitive attributes – for example, “leadership”, “motivation”, personality factors, “being in control” and especially “culture” – are understood as more important for education and the labor market than cognitive ability.

Finally, there is the widespread belief that nothing has changed – the reproduction of socioeconomic inequalities in contemporary societies remains as strong as ever – despite massive changes in educational participation, specific policies implemented to reduce inequality of opportunity, and dramatic improvements in health, welfare and economic wellbeing. Despite meritocratic ideals, education does not reduce the reproduction of socioeconomic inequalities across generations but instead perpetuates them. This pessimistic view implies that policymakers are wasting their time and gives credence to the surprisingly enduring, but often unsaid, argument that the reproduction of socioeconomic inequalities in contemporary Western societies can only be alleviated by the radical transformation of societies’ economic and social institutions.

There is far less consensus on explanations for the supposedly strong and enduring reproduction of socioeconomic inequalities across generations. Theoretical explanations may emphasize: financial factors, such as the capacity to buy “success” for one’s children; rational decision making, in that pursuing further education is not rational for working-class students; “culture” which either advantages those from high socioeconomic backgrounds or creates barriers for those from low socioeconomic backgrounds; or schools and the overall organization of education systems, especially the differentiation of students into different types of schools or curricular clusters within schools.

The purpose of this book is to show that, in Western industrialized countries, arguments that the reproduction of socioeconomic inequalities across generations is strong and enduring and that cognitive ability is irrelevant, are simply not true. Therefore, many of the theories surrounding the reproduction of socioeconomic inequalities are incorrect since they assume strong and enduring socioeconomic inequalities. In addition, many of the explicit and implicit contentions and claims made by such theories are not consistent with the bulk of the evidence from scientifically orientated empirical studies.

The sociological perspective

The sociological perspective emphasizes the importance of ascribed social characteristics – for example, class or socioeconomic background, religion, gender, race and ethnicity – for people’s lives. “People’s lives” encompasses their education, occupation, income, social interactions (including marriage), political orientations and other attitudes and behaviors. To some, the sociological perspective entails a science of society: the careful development of theory, models and measures, and the objective application of statistical and other methods, in order to uncover important social processes and produce a cumulative body of knowledge. Ideally, this facilitates the implementation of policies that would successfully reduce social inequalities and improve society for all (Cole 1994a: 130; Lipset 1994). The sociological perspective is clearly superior to notions that social outcomes are the result of the actions of deities or other supernatural forces, or simply part of the natural order. Arguably, it is more valuable than purely historical, psychological or economic approaches.

The overwhelming importance of social background and social group membership on what people did and thought was the generally accepted wisdom within sociology before the 1970s. The central sociological relationships were those involved in the intergenerational reproduction of socioeconomic inequalities: in education, occupation and income. It was taken for granted that socioeconomic background and a few other sociological variables (gender, religion, race, ethnicity and possibly region) closely predicted children’s development during infancy and early childhood, their performance at both primary and secondary school, the type of courses they took in high school, the age at which they left school, their final level of educational attainment, and their occupational standing and income at mid-life. Thus, the cycle of socioeconomic inequality is perpetuated across generations. The task of sociological theory was to account for these supposedly enduring and strong relationships.

Divisions and challenges

The sociological perspective was never a paradigm in the Kuhnian sense: a set of practices, beliefs and body of knowledge common to the discipline’s practitioners. The strongest division was between scientific and humanistic perspectives. The “scientific” school assumes that scientific principles could be applied to the study of society, albeit with modifications, in much the same way as psychology and economics do and are considered social sciences. In contrast, others understood sociology as a humanity, much more like history, philosophy or even literary criticism. This division was reflected in the type of sociology practised: quantitative sociology involving surveys and the statistical analysis of data were firmly in the scientific camp; historical sociology, social philosophy and much of what passes as theory fell in the humanities camp; and qualitative studies of small groups and organizations could fall into either.

From about 1970, the discipline became more openly hostile to the scientific study of society. Increasingly, critiques of “positivism” – defined generally as the application of scientific methods – almost invariably concluded that the scientific study of society was impossible (for a prominent example see Gouldner 1970). Furthermore, the goal of objectivity was ridiculed and sociologists proudly announced their political leanings (Berger 1992: 12). Although most prominent sociologists in the United States (US) of the pre- and early post-war years were clearly on the progressive, often socialist, side of politics (see Lipset 1994), a consequence of the anti-war and civil-rights movements of the late 1960s was pressure for sociology to become openly radical and politically active (Lipset 1994: 207).

From the mid-1960s, there were also empirical challenges. A variety of studies undermined some of the most cherished assumptions of sociology. In the US, the Coleman report, Equality of Educational Opportunity (Coleman et al. 1966: 301), found that only very small proportions of the variance in students’ verbal test scores could be uniquely accounted for by their economic or educational backgrounds. Furthermore, after taking into account measures of home background, schools and variations in their resources and curricula made little difference to student outcomes (1966: 22–3, 301). Based on the first large-scale national study of social stratification, Blau and Duncan’s (1967) The American Occupational Structure found a large amount of upward occupational mobility which was increasing (1967: 77, 106). Furthermore, a surprisingly low amount of the variation in educational attainment was accounted for by father’s occupation and father’s education (1967: 174). In the analysis of occupational attainment, years spent in formal education was a very much stronger influence than father’s occupation (1967: 170). Blau and Duncan’s groundbreaking study analyzed a theoretical model that linked socioeconomic background with education, occupation and earnings by path analysis, a sophisticated technique then only recently introduced into sociology (Duncan 1966).

At much the same time, a number of studies concluded that cognitive ability has consequences for socioeconomic outcomes, especially educational attainment (Eckland 1967; Sewell and Shah 1968; Taubman and Wales 1972). Intelligence along with other social-psychological variables was incorporated in the Wisconsin model of status attainment, which was an extension of the Blau–Duncan model (Sewell et al. 1969). A few years later, Duncan et al. (1972: 104) concluded that intelligence “has a substantial influence on occupational attainment, apart from its correlation with family background factors” and “bears an important relationship to income (net of social origins) for men of equal schooling and occupational statuses”. At much the same time, the publication of Jensen’s (1969) paper, “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?”, initiated the first of a series of acrimonious debates on the nature of intelligence and its role in education and social stratification.

The challenges to sociological orthodoxies were consolidated in Jencks et al.’s (1972) book, Inequality. The book concluded that: economic variation between families explains only a fraction of the variation in children’s cognitive scores (1972: 81); high schools and their resources make little difference to test scores or educational attainment (1972: 93, 159); the most important determinant of educational attainment (after family background broadly defined) is probably cognitive skill (1972: 159); the role of a father’s socioeconomic status “in determining his son’s status is surprising small”; family background is not the primary determinant of occupational status (1972: 179); and there is almost as much income inequality among adult men from the same socioeconomic background as among men in general (1972: 215). Jencks et al.’s (1972: 8) conclusion that socioeconomic success depends on on-the-job-competence and “luck” provided little scope for conventional sociological explanations.

Empirical studies from other countries also found considerably weaker sociological relationships than usually presumed. A comprehensive cross-national study of occupational mobility in Western countries found that “all countries studied are characterized by a high degree of mobility” leading to the conclusion of “widespread social mobility” (Lipset and Zetterberg 1959: 72, 25). Much later, Goldthorpe and Llewellyn (1977) demonstrated that conventional views that there was little social mobility in Britain and that the limited amount that existed was mostly only short range were incorrect. In a later cross-national study, Erikson and Goldthorpe (1992: 190) found an even greater amount of absolute mobility than Lipset and Zetterberg. Analyses of the Blau–Duncan status attainment model conducted in other countries also found that educational attainment was only moderately accounted for by socioeconomic background and that educational attainment had a much stronger influence on men’s occupational destinations than socioeconomic background (Boyd et al. 1985; Broom and Jones 1976; Halsey 1977).

These findings tended to confirm many of the claims of theories of industrialization and post-industrialization, or more generally “modernization” theory. In contrast to “pre-modern” societies, modern societies, that is industrialized Western societies, are comparatively open, exhibiting substantial amounts of social mobility. The process of socioeconomic attainment is governed much more by (educational) achievement than by social ascription, and the demands of industrial society mean that ability and competence are more important for occupational attainment than class or socioeconomic background. Western societies are to a considerable extent meritocratic, given the importance of cognitive ability for educational attainment and the strong effects of education for subsequent labor market outcomes. The more “modern” the society, the more meritocratic it is, and the weaker the impact of ascribed characteristics, such as socioeconomic background, but also gender, race, ethnicity, and other attributes from one’s birth.

These challenges to conventional sociological understandings were soon met with strong resistance. Blau and Duncan’s work was critiqued for an apparent preoccupation of method over substance, for not including the ways in which classes and interests groups shape the stratification system (assuming that they can and do), and for focusing almost exclusively on men (Acker 1973; Coser 1975). The statistical analysis of survey data was increasingly critiqued for being positivistic and empiricist, although it was not clear what this meant, only that such research and its findings could easily be dismissed (see Marsh 1982: 3, 48–51). Critical theory, neo-Marxist accounts of contemporary societies, anti-scientific critiques of quantitative sociology and activist “social action” research were gaining prominence. Empirically, Bowles (1972) argued that the Blau–Duncan and Wisconsin models of status attainment did not adequately measure socioeconomic background because they did not include income and wealth, and did not take into account measurement error. In a well-cited article, Collins (1971) posited two general explanations for the expansion of education: functionalist and conflict. Functionalist theories understand the expansion of education as a response to increased technical requirements of the labor market, whereas conflict theories focus on privileged social groups imposing their cultural values on the selection process for higher-status jobs. A consensus emerged that conflict theories much better accounted for social phenomena than functionalist explanations which were increasingly derided. This was followed by Bowles and Gintis’s (1976) book, which argued that, instead of transmitting knowledge and skills, the education system primarily prepared students for their appropriate roles in a class-stratified society. The root of the problem was the capitalist economy. Ignoring much of the US attainment literature, Bourdieu’s (1977) theory of cultural capital received widespread acclaim as an explanation for the supposedly strong and enduring socioeconomic inequalities in education and thus society more generally. Jencks et al.’s (1979: 10) second book, Who Gets Ahead, states that “background characteristics seem to exert appreciable effects on both occupational status and earnings even among men with the same test scores and education”, which was widely misinterpreted as reestablishing the primacy of socioeconomic background.¹ In contrast to the liberal-functionalist expectation of increased openness in occupational mobility due to industrialization, Erikson and Goldthorpe (1992) characterized social mobility in modern societies as in “constant flux” by focusing on the relative odds of social mobility.² Cross-national research on educational transitions from one level to the next concluded that, generally, socioeconomic inequalities in education have not declined (Blossfeld and Shavit 1993; Shavit et al. 2007b). Similarly, cross-national studies employing log-linear analysis on the cross-tabulation of educational attainment by class or educational background also concluded there has been no change over time (Goldthorpe 1996a; Pfeffer 2008).

There are therefore two general perspectives on the reproduction of socioeconomic inequalities in Western countries. The first “modernization” perspective argues that socioeconomic background, social class and other ascribed attributes have become, or are becoming, less important for a range of social outcomes. The opposing perspective, often referred to as reproduction theory, contends that the reproduction of socioeconomic inequalities has remained strong and/or enduring, characterized as “persistent inequality”, “persisting class differentials”, “maximally maintained inequality”, “constant flux”, and “trendless fluctuation”.

The fundamental question is: In modern societies, do socioeconomic origins have only a weak or declining influence on educational and subsequent socioeconomic outcomes, or has the intergenerational reproduction of socioeconomic inequalities remained strong despite societal changes and policies aimed to reduce inequality of opportunity?

The question is central to sociology as a discipline and is important beyond the discipline relevant to a number of fields in economics, education and psychology. It is also of great interest to policymakers and politicians. The response to this question should involve a series of inter-related theoretical generalizations that can account for the findings from the large number of relevant scientifically orientated studies.

Chapter outline

The next chapter is about theory. The first part discusses the state of sociological theory and the paucity of appropriate explanatory theories that logically account for a range of related empirical phenomena. Much sociological theory bears little resemblance to scientifically oriented explanatory theory: hermeneutic-type analyses of the texts of prominent sociological theorists, critiques of almost every aspect of Western societies from Marxist and other radical perspectives, epistemological discourses on science usually concluding on the impossibility of a science of soc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Theoretical matters
• 3 Concepts, measures and statistics
• 4 Cognitive ability I: Conceptual issues, stability and origins
• 5 Cognitive ability II: Educational outcomes
• 6 Cognitive ability III: Labor market outcomes
• 7 Socioeconomic inequalities in education I: The strength of the relationship
• 8 Socioeconomic inequalities in education II: Theoretical explanations
• 9 Socioeconomic inequalities in education III: Changes over time
• 10 Occupational attainment
• 11 Reproduction of economic inequalities
• 12 Conclusions and discussion
• References
• Index