Corrosive inequality? Structural determinants of educational and occupational expectations in comparative perspective

Authors

  • Joanna Sikora Australian National University
  • Lawrence J Saha Australian National University

Abstract

Previous research has shown that “life plan” expectations among 15 year olds are unexpectedly higher in less developed than developed countries (Saha 1992). To further explore this finding we analyse data from the 2000 and 2003 PISA surveys and find that inequality, operationalised by the Gini index, moderately but significantly increases educational and occupational expectations. This holds after controlling for academic ability, gender, family background (comprising parents’ education, occupation and the size of the home library) and a number of school characteristics. Prior studies have established that economic inequality is negatively related to the actual performance of high school students. However, we find that inequality is positively correlated with students’ expectations. This is counterintuitive because we know that higher expectations are related to higher levels of academic achievement. We discuss a number of theories to explain our findings and also the possible implications.

Author Biographies

  • Joanna Sikora, Australian National University
    Joanna Sikora is a lecturer and convenor of sociology in the School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. Her research interests include economic attitudes, work and occupations, as well as stratification and inequality in industrialised countries. She is a member of the Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility (RC28), International Sociological Association.
  • Lawrence J Saha, Australian National University
    Lawrence J. Saha is Professor of Sociology in the School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. His research interests include sociology of education, education and development, social psychology and the political
    socialisation of youth. He is a principal investigator for the Youth Electoral Study and vice-president of the Research Committee on Sociology of Education (RC04), International Sociological Association. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Social
    Psychology of Education and co-editor of the forthcoming book Youth and Political Participation.

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Published

2013-02-26

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 3 (2007)

Section

General Refereed Papers

License

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