Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Demography. 2020 Aug;57(4):1241-1270. doi: 10.1007/s13524-020-00896-2.
This study examines educational reproduction of East and West German men and women born between 1930 and 1950. In a prospective design, we study the importance of mobility and fertility pathways of reproduction, considering not only the social reproduction of education as an attribute but also the demographic reproduction of individuals who carry this attribute. Using data from NEPS and SOEP, we introduce a method that estimates prospective models based on retrospective data commonly available in surveys. The analysis offers new estimates of the expected number of high- and low-educated children born to men and women of different levels of education. Findings show that the importance of the fertility pathway of educational reproduction was higher in West than in East Germany, higher for women than for men, and higher for earlier than for later cohorts. For West German women of earlier cohorts, the fertility pathway tempered educational reproduction among the high-educated and reinforced it among the low-educated. Population renewal models show that differential fertility slightly lowered educational attainment and slightly increased inequality in educational attainment in the offspring generation. Across cohorts, the fertility pathway declined in importance, a result of fertility convergence between education groups and educational expansion in postwar Germany. We conclude that prospective designs advance our understanding of educational reproduction. The method that we introduce substantially reduces the data requirements of prospective analysis, facilitating future prospective research on social stratification.
本研究考察了 1930 年至 1950 年间出生于东德和西德的男性和女性的教育再生产。在一项前瞻性设计中，我们研究了流动和生殖途径的重要性，不仅考虑了教育作为一种属性的社会再生产，还考虑了具有这种属性的个体的人口再生产。我们利用来自 NEPS 和 SOEP 的数据，引入了一种基于调查中通常可用的回顾性数据估计前瞻性模型的方法。该分析提供了不同教育水平的男性和女性所生孩子中高学历和低学历的预期数量的新估计。研究结果表明，在西德，生殖途径对教育再生产的重要性高于东德，对女性的重要性高于男性，对早期出生队列的重要性高于后期出生队列。对于早期出生队列的西德女性，生殖途径在高学历人群中缓和了教育再生产，在低学历人群中加强了教育再生产。人口更替模型表明，不同的生育率略微降低了后代的教育程度，略微增加了教育程度的不平等。各队列之间，生殖途径的重要性下降，这是由于教育群体之间的生育率趋同以及战后德国教育的扩张。我们的结论是，前瞻性设计提高了我们对教育再生产的理解。我们引入的方法大大降低了前瞻性分析的数据要求，为未来关于社会分层的前瞻性研究提供了便利。
