We use National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) data and a counterfactual approach to test the macro-level implications of cultural reproduction and cultural mobility theory. Our counterfactual analyses show that the observed socioeconomic gradient in children’s educational attainment in the NLSY79 data would be smaller if cultural capital was more equally distributed between children whose parents are of low socioeconomic status (SES) and those whose parents are of high SES. They also show that hypothetically increasing cultural capital among low-SES parents would lead to a larger reduction in the socioeconomic gradient in educational attainment than reducing it among high-SES parents. These findings are consistent with cultural mobility theory (which argues that low-SES children have a higher return to cultural capital than high-SES children) but not with cultural reproduction theory (which argues that low-SES children have a lower return to cultural capital). Our analysis contributes to existing research by demonstrating that the unequal distribution of cultural capital shapes educational inequality at the macro level.

中文翻译：

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文化资本与教育不平等：反事实分析

我们使用1979年全国青年纵向调查（NLSY79）数据和反事实方法来检验文化再生产和文化流动性理论的宏观意义。我们的反事实分析表明，如果在父母的社会经济地位较低的儿童和父母的社会经济地位较高的儿童之间更加平均地分配文化资本，则在NLSY79数据中观察到的儿童教育程度的社会经济梯度会较小。他们还表明，假设增加低SES父母之间的文化资本，将导致教育程度的社会经济梯度下降幅度大于高SES父母之间的社会经济梯度下降幅度。这些发现与文化流动理论（认为低SES儿童的文化资本收益高于高SES儿童）相符，但与文化再生产理论（认为低SES儿童的文化资本收益较低）一致。 ）。我们的分析通过证明文化资本的不平等分布在宏观层面上影响了教育的不平等，为现有研究做出了贡献。