SOCIAL MOBILITY AND EDUCATION: IS EDUCATION A SOLUTION FOR THE LACK OF SOCIAL MOBILITY AND RISING INEQUALITY? NICOLE ROSACKER

NO….. AT LEAST NOT ENTIRELY

Access to certain privileges and economic capital has a large impact on social mobility and inequality The Gradational Regime (socioeconomic approach) supports this concept

GRADATIONAL REGIME “it is the total amount of resources that matters, and children born into privileged circumstances are privileged because they have access to so many resources” (Jonsson, Jan, David B. Grusky, Matthew Di Carlo, Reinhard Pollak 501). Children of rich parents have more opportunities i.e. access to better education which then leads to access to better jobs. The opposite is true for children of poor parents. This is when access to economic capital and other privileges is more important to preventing inequality and increasing social mobility than education.

INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION “The effect of the father’s socioeconomic status on the son’s career is mediated through education” (Gilbert 143). Education has a limited effect on social mobility and inequality, at least in the lower levels of education Featherman and Hauser found in their analysis of family background and education that they “shows direct and indirect (through education) connections between family background and son’s SES” (Gilbert 145). Education mostly reflects the privileges or disadvantages of family background

HIGHER LEVELS OF EDUCATION Christopher Jencks found this to be true up till a certain level of education Jencks found that:  “The final year of college, if it results in a degree is worth much more than any of the preceding years. The power of the degree is such that, among those who manage to graduate, the influence of family background is greatly reduced” (Gilbert 149). The higher the education the more influence it has on a person’s mobility and or decrease of inequality. But this is the threshold for when education becomes more important than family background i.e. access to resources and privileges.

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS Gilbert writes of a solution to economic inequality in his chapter “Family, Education and Careers”.  He writes, “if we want to reduce economic capital inequality, we must interfere with capitalist markets, so the CEO’s earn less and ordinary blue and white-collar workers earn more” (Gilbert 148). There needs to be a reduction of the ever widening income gap within the country This could be done by creating higher taxes for the rich and providing more social programs and support for those who need it. Some social changes that could be made would be a nation wide childcare program, paid family leave, equal pay, and lower tuition.

REFERENCES Carlo, Di Matthew, Jan O. Jonsson, David B. Grusky, and Reinhard Pollak. “It’s a Decent Bet that Our Children will be Professors too”. In The Inequality Reader: Contemporary and Foundational Readings in Race, Class, and Gender, Boulder: Westview Press, Dennis Gilbert, “Family, Education, and Career”. In The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality, Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press, 2011.