We study the association between sociospatial neighborhood conditions throughout childhood and educational attainment in adulthood. Using unique longitudinal microdata for a medium-sized Swedish town, we geocode its population at the address level, 1939 to 1967, and link individuals to national registers, 1968 to 2015. Thus, we adopt a long-term perspective on the importance of nearby neighbors during a period when higher education expanded. Applying a method for estimating individual neighborhoods at the address level, we analyze the association between the geographically weighted social class of the nearest 6 to 100 childhood neighbors (ages 2 to 17), and the likelihood of obtaining a university degree by age 40, controlling for both family social class and school districts. We show that even when growing up in a town with relatively low economic inequality, the social class of the nearest same-age neighbors in childhood was associated with educational attainment, and that the associations were similar regardless of class origin. Growing up in low-class neighborhoods lowered educational attainment; growing up in high-class neighborhoods increased attainment. Social class and neighborhoods reinforced each other, implying that high-class children clustered with each other had much higher odds of obtaining a university degree than low-class children from low-class neighborhoods. Thus, even if all groups benefited from the great expansion of free higher education in Sweden (1960s to 1970s), the large inequalities between the classes and neighborhoods remained unchanged throughout the period. These findings show the importance of an advantageous background, both regarding the immediate family and the networks of nearby people of the same age.

我们研究了整个儿童时期的社会空间邻里状况与成年后的受教育程度之间的关系。我们使用瑞典中型城镇的独特纵向微数据，在地址范围（1939年至1967年）对人口进行地理编码，并在1968年至2015年将个人链接到国家注册。因此，我们对附近地区的重要性采用了长期观点高等教育扩张时期的邻居。应用一种在地址级别估算单个社区的方法，我们分析了最近的6至100个儿童邻居（2至17岁）的地理加权社会阶层与到40岁获得大学学位的可能性之间的联系，适用于家庭社会阶层和学区。我们证明，即使在经济不平等程度相对较低的城镇中长大，童年中最接近的同龄邻居的社会阶层也与受教育程度相关，并且无论阶层的出身，这种关联都是相似的。在低等社区长大会降低学历；在高级社区长大的人获得的学识提高了。社会阶层和邻里相辅相成，这意味着与低阶层邻里的低阶层孩子相比，聚在一起的高阶层孩子获得大学学位的几率要高得多。因此，即使所有群体都受益于瑞典免费高等教育的巨大发展（1960年代至1970年代），在整个时期内，阶级和社区之间的巨大不平等仍然没有改变。