The Persistence of Persistent Inequality1

Education in the stratification process Sociologists view education as the pivot in the process of social stratification in economically advanced societies. While educational attainment is largely determined by the characteristics of people’s social origins, it is, in turn, an important determinant of their subsequent life chances—their occupational and economic attainments as well as their health and longevity. Education can be seen as a double-edged sword in the stratification process. On the one hand, it is an important avenue for social mobility for men and women raised in the lower social strata who can not inherit privilege. On the other hand, education contributes to the transmission of inequality between generations since it is unequally distributed between strata. Whether it performs more of the former or more of the latter depends on the extent to which educational attainment is affected by social origins. Therefore, a central empirical question in the field of social stratification and mobility is the extent to which, if at all, the association between social origins and education declined or increased over time. Although scholars studying processes of educational attainment subscribe to similar theoretical foundations which are well developed, they reach different conclusion regardin