The role of school and neighborhood context in patterns of intergenerational transmissions of socioeconomic status

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Gerken, Karen Raquel
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Sociology

Abstract

Research on social mobility and status attainment has focused on education and the production of human capital to explain how parents pass their socioeconomic status onto their children. While human capital is undoubtedly important, social capital and social context are significant for status attainment as well. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I study how neighborhoods and schools, as well as individual characteristics, influence adolescents' trajectories from their parent's socioeconomic status to their own. While most of the variation in adult income is within contexts, there is variation among respondents' income across adolescent contexts. Some of this variation is explained by the sociodemographic composition of contexts, as individual and family background characteristics matter a great deal for income attainment. However, levels of neighborhood disadvantage and advantage are also significantly related to adolescents' eventual income attainment. Neighborhood and school effects vary by parental economic background, and by respondent gender.

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