The Transmission of Educational Opportunities across three Generations – Prospects and Limits of the SOEP Data

In the last centuries, Germany has witnessed a remarkable educational expansion with a long-lasting dynamic. If the educational expansion in West Germany has gained such a momentum, it has to be proven empirically that the respective generation of parents – who themselves had profited from the educational expansion – pass on their (higher) educational aspirations to their children. In this paper, this already forgotten issue in the research of status attainment has been revitalized. Analyses with large-scale longitudinal data such as German life history data or German socio-economic panel data provide evidence that there is sustainability of educational expansion across three generations. Some of the limitations of the data and the analysis has been discussed in order to motivate the scientific community to gather advanced information on intergenerational transmission of educational opportunities