Panel survey analysis reveals household book count predicts parental educational aspirations in Czech families, suggesting book ownership reflects economic status rather than reading habits.
The aim of this paper is to examine the link between a family’s scholarly culture and the educational aspirations of parents for their children. Using data from the first and the second wave of the Czech Household Panel Survey (2015, 2016), the study reveals that the number of books in a household – the core aspect of scholarly culture – is significantly linked to the educational aspirations of parents for their children. However, other indicators of scholarly culture (frequency of reading, general interest in books) are not significantly associated with parents’ university aspirations. These results suggest that, in the Czech Republic, the presence of a large number of books in the home signals higher social status and refers to the economic power of parents rather than to a family’s literacy or reading culture.
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Hamplová et al. (2024) studied this question.
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