Multiple dimensions of social background and horizontal educational attainment in Sweden

Abstract

We follow Swedish cohorts born between 1976 and 1984 through their educational career and analyze how different dimensions of parents’ socio-economic standing (SES) in education, occupation, income, and wealth structure horizontal attainment in secondary tracks and tertiary fields. Our results show that there is strong horizontal segregation by parents’ SES. However, the influence of social background dimensions on educational attainment is not uniform, but differ by combination of dimension and track or field. We identify a main contrast between parents’ education, and to some extent occupation, on the one hand, and the economic dimensions of income and wealth on the other. When we assess the total contribution of all dimensions, we find that net of previous achievement about 35% of the attainment of different upper-secondary tracks, and 25% of attainment of different tertiary fields is due to social background. Despite the non-uniform pattern, this segregation is also linked to future inequality, i.e. in chances of tertiary graduation linked to upper-secondary tracks and in expected earnings linked to tertiary field choices.