Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Educational equalization – Germany »

Abstract I draw on the findings of a recently completed comparative research project to address the question: how did intergenerational social mobility change over cohorts of men and women born in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, and what role, if any, did education play in this? The countries studied are the US, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Notwithstanding the differences between them, by and large they present the same picture. Rates of upward mobility increased among cohorts born in the second quarter of the century and then declined among those born later. Among earlier born cohorts, social fluidity increased (that is, the association between the class a person was born into and the class he or she came to occupy as an adult declined) and then remained unchanged for those born after mid-century. The association between class origins and educational attainment followed much the same trend as social fluidity. This suggests that growing equalization in education may have contributed to the increase in social fluidity. In our analyses we find that this is so, but educational expansion also led to greater fluidity in some countries. There is also a strong link between upward mobility and social fluidity. Upward mobility was mostly driven by the expansion of higher-level white-collar jobs, especially in the 30 years after the end of the Second World War. This facilitated social fluidity because people from working class and farming origins could move into the service or salariat classes without reducing the rate at which children born into those classes could remain there. Educational expansion, educational equalization, and rapid structural change in the economies of the US and Europe all contributed to greater social fluidity among people born in the second quarter of the twentieth century. For people born after mid-century, rates of downward mobility have increased: however, despite the lack of further educational equalization and less pronounced structural change, social fluidity has remained unchanged.

Substantial educational inequalities have been documented in Germany for decades. In this article, we examine whether educational inequalities among children have increased or remained the same since the school closures of spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our perspective is longitudinal: We compare the amount of time children in secondary schools spent on school-related activities at home before the pandemic, during school closures, and immediately after returning to in-person learning. We operationalize family socio-economic status using the highest parental educational attainment. Based on the theoretical assumption that the pandemic affected everyone equally, we formulate a hypothesis of equalization during the first period of school closures. For the period thereafter, however, we assume that parents with a low level of education had more difficulties bearing the additional burden of supervising and supporting their children’s learning activities. Thus, for that period, we postulate an increase in educational inequality. To study our hypotheses, we use data from the 2019 wave of the SOEP and the SOEP-CoV study, both of which are probability samples. The SOEP-CoV study provides a unique database, as it was conducted during the lockdown of spring 2020 and in the following month. For statistical analysis, we use probit regressions at three measurement points (in 2019, in 2020 during the school closures, and in the month after closures). The comparison of these three time points makes our analysis and findings unique in the research on education during the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular with regard to Germany-wide comparisons. Our results confirm the hypothesis of equalization during the first school closures and the hypothesis of an increase in educational in the subsequent period. Our findings have direct policy implications regarding the need to further expand support systems for children.

Defence date: 16 May 2017
Examining Board: Professor Hans-Peter Blossfeld, EUI (Supervisor); Professor Fabrizio Bernardi, EUI; Professor Héctor Cebolla Boado, UNED; Professor Hyunjoon Park, University of Pennsylvania
As the saying goes: there are some things that money cannot buy. Yet, scholars have tended to analyze the upper class as a homogeneous group, able to overcome any difficulty that life puts in their way to educational success. Nonetheless, the children of the upper class are subject to the disadvantages of a historically discriminated ethnicity, negatively stereotyped gender, and the boundaries of the institutional framework, among other things. By neglecting the heterogeneity of the upper class, the literature on the Inequalities of Educational Opportunities (IEO) has forgotten to test the limits of class privilege in education. The most crucial point for fully comprehending the research that is being pursued here, is that this dissertation does not tackle whether the rich are simply doing better than the poor in school, or whether the gap between social classes is widening or shrinking. Instead, it focuses on the dynamics and limits of privilege. It analyzes how, in some contexts, the advantaged can be disadvantaged too. In other words, it aims to shed light on what happens when privilege meets disadvantage, and how the perks of being upper class vary among different social groups, such as blacks and whites in the US, or boys and girls in Germany. There are three main lessons to be learned from the three empirical chapters of this dissertation. First, privilege is multidimensional (chapter 3). Second, privilege is dynamic (chapter 4). Finally, privilege is contextual (chapter 5). Lastly, one may wonder why the focus should be on upper-class children since they are, generally, the top performers in any country in the world. The reason is simple; because the dynamics of privilege are part of the IEO puzzle. Only by testing the limits of privilege will we be able to unravel the riddle that IEO poses.