Stratification Theory, Socioeconomic Background, and Educational Attainment: A Formal Analysis

Three proposals explicate the social origins/education transitions asso-ciation. Maximally maintained inequality (MMI) (Raftery and Hout 1993) claims the association declines only at transitions high origin persons universally or nearly universally make. Relative risk aversion (RRA) (Breen and Goldthorpe 1997) suggests broader inequality reduction is possible and depends on changing costs and norms. Effectively maintained inequality (EMI) (Lucas 2001) contends mean-ingful inequality reduction is elusive because qualitatively different types of education maintain consequential inequality, even at universal transitions. Each proposal has evidentiary support, yet because propos-als highlight different association indices, most are described infor-mally, and their distinctiveness is disputed, comparative evaluation requires a prior, clarifying, formal analysis. Formal analysis reveals that MMI is non-falsifiable. RRA and EMI are falsifiable and are potentially but not necessarily complementary. Future research should investigate whether and why RRA, EMI, both, or neither, apply. KEY WORDS • education transitions • Gates gambit • MMI • RRA • EMI The analysis of a sequence of education transitions has become the pri-mary approach for studies of educational attainment. In this approach, also known as the Mare model, analysts estimate one regression equa-tion for each year of schooling studied, obtaining social background coefficients for each transition. Depending on the data used, the Mare model is especially illuminating because it allows analysts to observe several different patterns simultaneously, including: (1) the possibl