Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, Faculty of Business and Economics Building, The University of Melbourne, 111 Barry Street, Victoria 3010, Australia.
Soc Sci Res. 2013 Nov;42(6):1635-49. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2013.07.004. Epub 2013 Jul 16.
Effectively Maintained Inequality (EMI) is proposed as an explanation for contemporary socioeconomic inequalities in education. Socioeconomic inequalities are 'maintained' by students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds taking less advantageous curricula influencing their post-school destinations. The purpose of this study is to evaluate EMI by addressing several hypotheses derived from the EMI thesis using Australian longitudinal data. It analyses within-school transitions and the transition from school to post-school destinations (elite university, other university, vocational and no post-school study or training). The study also models curricular placement (subject choice). It finds that the transitions within- and post-school are more powerfully influenced by students' academic ability than by socioeconomic background. Furthermore, subject choice has strong impacts on the transitions. Similarly, Year 12 subject choice is only weakly predicted by socioeconomic background, and more strongly influenced by ability and occupational interests. In turn, occupational interests are largely independent of socioeconomic background. The EMI thesis is not supported.
有效维持的不平等（EMI）被提出作为当代教育中社会经济不平等的解释。社会经济不平等是通过来自较低社会经济背景的学生选择不利的课程来“维持”的，这影响了他们毕业后的去向。本研究旨在通过使用澳大利亚的纵向数据来解决 EMI 论文中的几个假设，从而评估 EMI。它分析了校内的过渡以及从学校到毕业后的去向（精英大学、其他大学、职业和无毕业后学习或培训）的过渡。该研究还对课程安排（科目选择）进行了建模。研究发现，校内和校外的过渡更多地受到学生学术能力的影响，而不是社会经济背景的影响。此外，科目选择对过渡有很强的影响。同样，12 年级的科目选择受社会经济背景的影响较弱，而更多地受能力和职业兴趣的影响。反过来，职业兴趣在很大程度上与社会经济背景无关。因此，EMI 理论并不成立。
