Educational Transitions in Israel: A Test of the Industrialization and Credentialism Hypotheses

The industrialization hypothesis predicts a decline in the effects of social background variables on educational attainment across cohorts, whereas the credentialism hypothesis predicts a decline of these effects on the attainment of lower educational levels and stable or rising effects on the attainment of higher levels of schooling. Employing a model developed by Mare (1981) and analyzing data from the 1974 Israeli Mobility Survey, the authors found that the effects of father's education and occupation on the various educational transitions were stable across cohorts who attended school during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. However, the effects of ethnicity, a major axis of the Israeli system of social stratification, declined in the transition from primary to secondary schooling but remained constant on subsequent educational transitions.