| 1. |
- Baier, Tina, et al.
(författare)
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Genetic Influences on Educational Achievement in Cross-National Perspective
- 2022
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Ingår i: European Sociological Review. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0266-7215 .- 1468-2672. ; 38:6, s. 959-974
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There is a growing interest in how social conditions moderate genetic influences on education [gene–environment interactions (GxE)]. Previous research has focused on the family, specifically parents’ social background, and has neglected the institutional environment. To assess the impact of macro-level influences, we compare genetic influences on educational achievement and their social stratification across Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. We combine well-established GxE-conceptualizations with the comparative stratification literature and propose that educational systems and welfare-state regimes affect the realization of genetic potential. We analyse population-representative survey data on twins (Germany and the United States) and twin registers (Norway and Sweden), and estimate genetically sensitive variance decomposition models. Our comparative design yields three main findings. First, Germany stands out with comparatively weak genetic influences on educational achievement suggesting that early tracking limits the realization thereof. Second, in the United States genetic influences are comparatively strong and similar in size compared to the Nordic countries. Third, in Sweden genetic influences are stronger among disadvantaged families supporting the expectation that challenging and uncertain circumstances promote genetic expression. This ideosyncratic finding must be related to features of Swedish social institutions or welfare-state arrangements that are not found in otherwise similar countries.
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| 2. |
- Grätz, Michael
(författare)
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Does Increasing the Minimum School-Leaving Age Affect the Intergenerational Transmission of Education? Evidence from Four European Countries
- 2021
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Ingår i: European Sociological Review. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0266-7215 .- 1468-2672. ; 38:4, s. 543-559
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Reforms in the minimum school-leaving age are candidates for policies that affect the intergenerational transmission of education. I propose that the societal contexts in which these reforms occur may moderate their effects on educational mobility. To test this hypothesis, I estimate the cross-country variation in the effects of increases in the minimum school-leaving age on educational mobility in four European countries. I employ a regression discontinuity design and data from the European Social Survey and the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe on Austria, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands. The findings provide no evidence to the hypothesis that the reforms in the minimum school-leaving age changed the association between the education of parents and the education of their children in any of the four countries. These findings are robust to measuring educational attainment in a multitude of ways, and they do not vary between men and women. The results are at odds with rational choice theories that expect reforms in the minimum school-leaving age to increase educational mobility.
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| 3. |
- Grätz, Michael
(författare)
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Does regime change affect intergenerational mobility? Evidence from German reunification
- 2019
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study uses the natural experiment of German reunification and a difference-in-differences approach to test whether the political and economic transition in East Germany in 1990 affected intergenerational occupational and educational mobility. Applying data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), I show that German reunification did neither strongly affect occupational nor educational mobility. These findings are robust to operationalizing social origin in various ways. Admittedly, reunification may have had small effects on occupational and educational mobility that cannot be uncovered with data currently available. However, my findings rule out that there were large effects of German reunification on intergenerational mobility. These findings are at odds with theories that argue that institutions strongly affect intergenerational mobility.
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| 4. |
- Grätz, Michael
(författare)
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Does Regime Change Affect Intergenerational Mobility? Evidence from German Reunification
- 2021
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Ingår i: European Sociological Review. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0266-7215 .- 1468-2672. ; 37:3, s. 465-481
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study uses the natural experiment of German reunification and a difference-in-differences approach to test whether the political and economic transition in East Germany in 1990 affected intergenerational occupational and educational mobility. Results obtained using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study show that German reunification did neither strongly affect occupational nor educational mobility. These findings are robust to operationalizing social origin in various ways. Admittedly, reunification may have had small or long-term effects on occupational and educational mobility that cannot be uncovered with the data and research design employed in this study. However, the findings rule out that there were large, short- or medium-term effects of German reunification on intergenerational mobility. These findings are at odds with theories that argue that institutional change has strong, immediate causal effects on intergenerational mobility.
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| 5. |
- Grätz, Michael, 1986-
(författare)
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Does Schooling Affect Socioeconomic Inequalities in Educational Attainment? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Germany
- 2023
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Ingår i: Sociological Science. - 2330-6696. ; 10, s. 880-902
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Critical theories of education and the dynamics of skill formation model predict that the education system reproduces socioeconomic inequalities in educational attainment. Previous empirical studies comparing changes in socioeconomic inequalities in academic performance over the summer to changes in these inequalities during the school year have argued, however, that schooling reduces inequalities in educational performance. The present study highlights the question of whether schooling affects socioeconomic inequalities in educational attainment by analyzing a natural experiment that induces exogenous variation in the length of schooling and allowed me to investigate the causal, long-term effects of the length of schooling on inequalities in educational attainment. Some German states moved the school start from spring to summer in 1966/1967 and introduced two short school years, each of which was three months shorter than a regular school year. I use variation in the short school years across cohorts and states to estimate the causal effects of the length of schooling on socioeconomic inequalities in educational attainment based on two German panel surveys. Less schooling due to the short school years did not affect inequalities in educational attainment. This finding runs counter to the results from the summer learning literature and to the predictions of the dynamics of skill formation model and critical theories of education. I conclude by discussing the implications of this finding for our understanding of socioeconomic inequalities in educational attainment.
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| 6. |
- Grätz, Michael, et al.
(författare)
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Large loss in studying time during the closure of schools in Switzerland in 2020
- 2021
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Ingår i: Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. - : Elsevier BV. - 0276-5624 .- 1878-5654. ; 71
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The majority of European, as well as many other, countries responded to the outbreak of the new coronavirus with a closure of schools and universities. The expectation of policy makers was that schools and universities would continue to provide lessons online and that students would engage in home learning. How much home learning has there been? We use nationally representative, longitudinal data on 14- to 25-year-old Swiss students to analyze the effects of school closures on studying time. Our results show that students reduced, on average, their studying time from 35 to 23 hours per week. This reduction was stronger for students in secondary school age than for students older than 18. Contrary to our expectations, these reductions in studying time did not vary between male and female students. In addition, children from families with highly educated parents reduced their studying time in absolute terms more than children from families with low educated parents. In relative terms, reductions in children’s studying time did not vary by parental education. We also found some variation in the reduction in studying time across the three linguistic regions in Switzerland. Taken together, our findings show that studying time was considerably reduced during the closure of schools. We therefore conclude by suggesting political measures that can compensate for the loss in studying time a generation of Swiss students experienced between March and July 2020.
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| 7. |
- Grätz, Michael, 1986-, et al.
(författare)
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Parental ages and the intergenerational transmission of education : evidence from Germany, Norway, and the United States
- 2024
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Ingår i: European Societies. - 1461-6696 .- 1469-8307.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The diverging destinies hypothesis predicts that educational inequality increases in contemporary societies because parents with higher levels of education postpone the birth of their children. This hypothesis is supported by empirical evidence demonstrating that advanced parental ages improve children’s educational outcomes. However, the consequences of socioeconomic differences in parental ages for the intergenerational transmission of education also depend on whether the associations between parental ages and child education vary by parental education. To test this hypothesis, we use data from three countries representing different welfare regimes: Germany, Norway, and the United States. In all three countries, children’s educational attainment at the secondary school level increases with higher parental ages more in families with low than in families with highly educated parents. In other words, the intergenerational transmission of education is stronger for younger than for older parents. Consequently, our findings nuance the diverging destinies hypothesis by demonstrating that increasing parental ages in socioeconomically disadvantaged families increases educational mobility more than decreasing parental ages in socioeconomically advantaged families. These findings are qualitatively the same in all three countries, suggesting that diverging destinies also occur in countries outside the United States.
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| 8. |
- Grätz, Michael, et al.
(författare)
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Reinforcing at the Top or Compensating at the Bottom? Family Background and Academic Performance in Germany, Norway, and the United States
- 2020
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Ingår i: European Sociological Review. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0266-7215 .- 1468-2672. ; 36:3, s. 381-394
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Research on educational mobility usually studies socioeconomic differences at the mean of children’s academic performance but fails to consider the variation in the shape of socioeconomic differences across the outcome distribution. Theories of social mobility as well as theories about the resource allocation within families predict such variation. We use quantile regression models to estimate variation in socioeconomic differences across the distribution of academic performance using different indicators of family background (parental education, occupation, earnings, and wealth). We apply this approach to data on Germany, Norway, and the United States, three countries that represent different welfare and education regimes that may affect the intergenerational transmission of educational advantage. We find stronger socioeconomic differences at the bottom than at the middle and the smallest differences at the top of the performance distribution. These findings are virtually identical across all four indicators of family background. We also find no cross-national differences in the shape of socioeconomic differences in academic performance.
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| 9. |
- Grätz, Michael, et al.
(författare)
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Sibling Similarity in Education Across and Within Societies
- 2021
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Ingår i: Demography. - : Duke University Press. - 0070-3370 .- 1533-7790. ; 58:3, s. 1011-1037
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The extent to which siblings resemble each other measures the omnibus impact of family background on life chances. We study sibling similarity in cognitive skills, school grades, and educational attainment in Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We also compare sibling similarity by parental education and occupation within these societies. The comparison of sibling correlations across and within societies allows us to characterize the omnibus impact of family background on education across social landscapes. Across countries, we find larger population-level differences in sibling similarity in educational attainment than in cognitive skills and school grades. In general, sibling similarity in education varies less across countries than sibling similarity in earnings. Compared with Scandinavian countries, the United States shows more sibling similarity in cognitive skills and educational attainment but less sibling similarity in school grades. We find that socioeconomic differences in sibling similarity vary across parental resources, countries, and measures of educational success. Sweden and the United States show greater sibling similarity in educational attainment in families with a highly educated father, and Finland and Norway show greater sibling similarity in educational attainment in families with a low-educated father. We discuss the implications of our results for theories about the impact of institutions and income inequality on educational inequality and the mechanisms that underlie such inequality.
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| 10. |
- Grätz, Michael, et al.
(författare)
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Sibling similarity in income : A life course perspective
- 2022
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Ingår i: Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. - : Elsevier BV. - 0276-5624 .- 1878-5654. ; 78
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sibling similarity in income is a measure of the omnibus effect of family and community background on income. We estimate sibling similarity in income accumulated over the life course (ages 18 to 60) to demonstrate that previous research has underestimated sibling similarity in income. Using high-quality Swedish register data, we find sibling similarity in accumulated, lifetime income to be much higher than sibling similarity in income measured over a short number of years. In addition, we test theories predicting variation in sibling similarity over the life course. We find that, contrary to predictions derived from the model of cumulative advantage, sibling similarity in accumulated income is largely stable over the life course. Sister correlations in income are lower than brother correlations but differences diminish across cohorts. We also find largely the same amount of sibling similarity in accumulated income in socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged families. We conclude by discussing the importance of using accumulated income for understanding trends and mechanisms underlying the omnibus effect of family and community background on income.
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