The relationship between inequality of educational opportunities and inequality of educational outcomes
Abstract
In a given educational system, students from different socioeconomic backgrounds can
experience inequality in terms of opportunities (Inequality of Educational Opportunity,
or IEOpp), or in terms of outcomes (Inequality of Educational Outcome, or IEOut). The
former can best be studied by examining the effect of family socioeconomic status (SES)
on the probability of passing from one level of education to another. The latter can be
studied by estimating the effect of family SES on the highest achieved level of education.
Mare (1981) showed that IEOut depends, in part, on the distribution of education, whereas
IEOpp does not. This finding has been primarily used as an argument for studying IEOpp
and not studying IEOut. This paper aims to build on the results obtained by Mare
(1981) to show how IEOpp and IEOut are mathematically related to one another, and
how this relationship can be used to obtain a more informative description of differences
in educational inequality across groups, such as cohorts or gender. Applying the result
to cohorts born in the Netherlands for cohorts born between 1894 and 1978 demonstrates
how this model can be used to describe the impact of changes in IEOpp, educational
expansion, and the disadvantaged position of women regarding IEOut.