Rational Action Theory and Educational Attainment. Changes in the Impact of Economic Resources

The article addresses the question of whether the impact of economic resources on educational attainment has changed over time. According to the rational action perspective, variations in parental economic resources should be an important source of inequality in educational attainment, because richer families most easily can pay for their children's education. Moreover, inequalities should increase in periods with increasing economic inequality and insecurity. There is no large body of systematic empirical knowledge supporting these assumptions. The data used here is a large sample consisting of the total cohorts of Norwegians born between 1955 and 1984, thus covering the thirty-year period up to the most recent years. Parental economic resources are measured as the mean earnings of father and mother the five years before leaving compulsory school. The analyses indicate that the impact of economic resources has varied in a curvilinear fashion, with decreasing inequality among the older cohorts and increasing inequality among the younger cohorts. This pattern fits well with expectations based on economic developments in Norway in the period as economic inequality and unemployment increased in the period with increasing inequality in educational attainment.