Do university-educated families lose their edge as education expands? The withering performance and advantage of their children.

Extensive research has examined the effect of educational expansion in one cohort on educational inequality and occupational returns in that same cohort. This study makes a novel contribution by exploring whether the expansion of university education among parents affects their children's academic a...

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Publicado en:Social Forces Vol. 105; no. 1; pp. 168 - 190
Autores principales: Valdés, Manuel T, Bernardi, Fabrizio, Lievore, Ilaria
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Oxford University Press / USA Sep2026
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: Do university-educated families lose their edge as education expands? The withering performance and advantage of their children.
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          Valdés, Manuel T
          Bernardi, Fabrizio
          Lievore, Ilaria
        affil:
          Department of Sociology, University of Vienna, Rooseveltplatz 2A, Vienna 1090, AustriaDepartment of Sociology II, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), C. del Obispo Trejo, 2, Moncloa - Aravaca, Madrid 28040, Spain
          Department of Sociology II, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), C. del Obispo Trejo, 2, Moncloa - Aravaca, Madrid 28040, Spain
          Fondazione per la Scuola, Piazza Gian Lorenzo Bernini 5, Torino 10138, Italy
      keyword:
        analysis
        copyrightHolder:University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
        copyrightYear:2026
        educational expansion
        educational inequality
        inLanguage:en
        intergenerational effect
        multilevel
        PISA
        publisher:Oxford University Press
        sameAs:https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf189
        analysis
        copyrightHolder:University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
        copyrightYear:2026
        educational expansion
        educational inequality
        inLanguage:en
        intergenerational effect
        multilevel
        PISA
        publisher:Oxford University Press
        sameAs:https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf189
      ab: Extensive research has examined the effect of educational expansion in one cohort on educational inequality and occupational returns in that same cohort. This study makes a novel contribution by exploring whether the expansion of university education among parents affects their children's academic achievement. We argue that this expansion reduces the selectivity of university attainment, making graduates progressively less selected on traits relevant to their children's achievement. Additionally, expansion likely diminishes occupational returns on a university degree, increasing the proportion of overqualified university-graduated parents. Consequently, the average achievement of children from university-educated families should diminish with this expansion among parents. Using data from 30 countries across seven waves of the Program for International Student Assessment, we show that students from university-educated families experience a notable decline in achievement as the proportion of university-educated parents increases. Importantly, the growing over-qualification of university-educated parents and the diminishing objectified cultural capital of university-educated families mediate this negative effect. Furthermore, we also observe a negative association between educational expansion among parents and children's achievement in non-university-educated families, but less pronounced, resulting in a negative (albeit modest) association between expansion among parents and inequality among children.
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      doctype: Article
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    language: English
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