Differences in social capital and the inequality of educational outcomes

Abstract

This dissertation assesses if and how cultural properties that augment social ties, commonly denoted as social capital, are related to differences in the inequality of educational outcomes (IEO). Cultural properties of social aggregates (and several other factors) influence the likelihood of social ties and thus constitute a social context moderating IEO. The main hypothesis is that collective social capital will make experiences of status groups more similar by mitigating differences in cultural capital and thus will also reduce IEO. This hypothesis is challenged by analyzing the effects of three different contextual levels where collective social capital can become relevant: countries (paper 1), schools (paper 2) and school class networks (paper 3). The first article (Collective social capital. Does it make a difference for the inequality of educational outcomes? ) deals with the context effects of the average level of generalized trust and membership in voluntary associations in different countries by using data from the World Values Survey (WVS), European Values Study (EVS) and PISA. The second article (Do school-level differences in social capital shape IEO? School-level context effects of connectedness of students and parental school volunteering.) tests this hypothesis on the school level by analyzing the effect of ties of students and their parents’ school volunteering by using the same data sources. The third article (Network resources, resource deficits and the consequences of homophily on educational outcomes. Evidence from school class networks in 4 European countries.) adds to the debated topics by developing a resource theory, analyzing resource deficits in 4 European countries. Additionally, it tests for effects of higher socio-economic status homophily in school classes on the outcomes of students by application of estimates derived from ERG models. This analysis is based on micro-data on students’ social ties collected by the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey (CILS4EU).