Religio-Ethnic Effects on Attainments in the Early Career

A cultural explanation for religio-ethnic effects on attainments is tested by a structural equation model applied to a sample of white males who were seniors in Wisconsin high schools in 1957. Jews have a highly positive cultural orientation to education and occupational status, while that of Irish and Anglo-Saxon Catholics is mostly positive, that of Italian Catholics is mixed, and that of German Lutherans is mostly negative. Cultural mediation through high-school academic performance, significant others, and educational plans accounts for part of the religio-ethnic effect on education. Structural factors may account for remaining direct effects. Educational and occupational aspirations are critical cultural mediators of religio-ethnic effects on early occupational attainment. Religio-ethnic effects on achievements-particularly first job-are heightened in an urban subsample. Context-specific group cultural patterns may partly account for this finding, but historically rooted patterns of differential occupational opportunity unique to this city may also be at work.