Meritocracy, educational and status attainment

In modern societies, education is one of the main mechanisms in the reproduction of inequalities in terms of an existing link between social origin and destination class across the life course (see, for example, DiPrete and Eirich, 2006; Müller and Jacob, 2008; Müller and Kogan, 2010). Education is strongly linked to life chances – income, political participation, health, subjective well-being and even life expectancy (see Hadjar and Becker, 2009) – and educational inequalities are reflected in inequalities in life chances throughout the life course (Mayer, 2005). There is a long-lasting tradition of educational policies and reforms which have attempted to weaken the influence of social origin and thus develop more meritocratic educational and status attainment (see Breen et al, 2009). Two key mechanisms have to be analysed with regard to the impact of the institutional settings of the education system on the degree of meritocracy in educational and status attainment: first, to what extent does social origin determine educational attainment; and, second, to what extent does education – rather than social origin – shape status attainment (for example, class position, income, occupational career)? A general assumption regarding why education system characteristics should influence inequalities in educational and status attainment, is that such institutional characteristics have special consequences for the primary and secondary effects of social origin on educational attainment (Boudon, 1974), for example, to what extent do education systems try to compensate for class-specific achievement deficits, and to what extent do education systems include selection points and foster or reduce class-specific differences in cost-benefit calculations (for example, Becker and Hecken, 2009a). The institutional conditions of the transition from school (across general education or vocational training) to work and the general links between education system and labour markets need to be considered in the light of inequalities in status attainment (see Muller and Shavit, 1998; Becker and Hecken, 2009b).

First, theoretical accounts of meritocracy and, in particular, of inequalities in educational and status attainment, and how these are shaped by institutional characteristics, are considered. The empirical section consists of both a summary of major studies and our own empirical multi-level analyses.