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In this article, we return to Max Weber's distinction between class and status as related but different forms of social stratification. We argue that this distinction is not only conceptually cogent, but empirically important as well. Indeed, class and status do have distinct explanatory power when it comes to studying varying areas of social life. Consistent with Weber's assertions, we show that economic security and prospects are stratified more by class than by status, while the opposite is true for outcomes in the domain of cultural consumption. Within politics, class rather than status predicts Conservative versus Labour Party voting in British general elections and also Left-Right political attitudes. But it is status rather than class that predicts Libertarian-Authoritarian attitudes.

In this article we start from Boudon's important, but still surprisingly neglected, distinction between 'primary' and 'secondary' effects in the creation of class differentials in educational attainment. Primary effects are all those, whether of a genetic or socio-cultural kind, that are expressed via the association between children's class backgrounds and their actual levels of academic performance. Secondary effects are those that are expressed via the educational choices that children from differing class backgrounds make within the range of choice that their previous performance allows them. We apply a method introduced by Erikson and Jonsson to represent the relationship between primary and secondary effects in analysing class differentials in one crucial transition within the English and Welsh educational system: that which children make at around age 16 and which determines whether or not they will pursue the higher-level academic qualifications -A-levels -that are usually required for university entry. We then use a development of this method that we have earlier proposed in order to produce quantitative estimates of the relative importance of primary and secondary effects as they operate within this transition. We show that secondary effects reinforce primary effects to a substantial extent, accounting for at least one quarter, and possibly up to one-half, of class differentials as measured by odds ratios. In conclusion, we consider some theoretical and policy implications of our findings.keywords: class origin ◆ educational inequality ◆ England and Wales ◆ primary effects ◆ secondary effects

Social class differentials in educational attainment have been extensively studied in numerous countries. In this paper, we begin by examining class differentials in the progression to higher secondary education among 16-year-old children in England and Wales. As has been shown for other countries, the differentials result both from the primary effects of differing levels of academic performance of children of different class background and from the secondary effects of differences in the educational choices that these children make at given levels of performance. Through counterfactual analyses in which the performance distribution of one class is combined with the choice distribution of another, primary and secondary effects are decomposed and the former are shown to be roughly three times the size of the latter.academic performance ͉ educational choice ͉ logistic regression ͉ counterfactual ͉ social inequality S ocial class differentials in educational attainment have been extensively studied. Children from more advantaged class backgrounds have higher levels of educational attainment than children from less advantaged class backgrounds. Sociological evidence suggests that there has been a relatively high degree of temporal stability in the association between class origin and educational attainment in modern industrial societies (although where change has occurred it has generally been in the direction of a weakening association) (1, 2). Explanations have focused on how class differences in economic, social, and cultural resources lead to differences in academic performance. However, Boudon (3) argued that, in addition to interclass differences in the distribution of academic performance, there are also interclass differences in the educational choices made at given levels of performance. He called these primary and secondary effects, respectively.The distinction between primary and secondary effects has been largely neglected in empirical research, although a notable exception is a study of Swedish students by Erikson and Jonsson (4). In the present paper, we develop their method and apply it to educational choices made by 16-year-old students in England and Wales. At age 16, students complete compulsory education, and then choose whether they will continue in full-time education to take advanced level academic qualifications (A levels) or alternatively enter vocational education or the labor market. We first show that both primary and secondary effects are present in creating class differentials in entering A-level education.To investigate the relative importance of primary and secondary effects, we use a counterfactual analysis implemented by numerical integration. We suppose an idealized process that goes from performance to choice to outcome. In our implied model, therefore, a student achieves a level of academic performance and then makes their choice about whether to continue to A-level education. It is assumed that the choice characteristics of students of one class can be combined with the performa...

In this paper we seek to provide an explanation of three widely documented empirical phenomena. These are: (i) increasing educational participation rates; (ii) little change in class differentials in these rates; and (iii) a recent and very rapid erosion of gender differentials in educational attainment levels. We develop a formal mathematical model, using a rational action approach and drawing on earlier work that seeks to explain these three trends as the product of individual decisions made in the light of the resources available to, and the constraints facing, individual pupils and their families. The model represents children and their families as acting rationally, i.e. as choosing among the different educational options available to them on the basis of evaluations of their costs and benefits and of the perceived probabilities of more or less successful outcomes. It then accounts for stability, or change, in the educational differentials that ensue by reference to a quite limited range of situational features. So, both class and gender differences in patterns of educational decisions are explained as the consequence of differences in resources and constraints. We do not, therefore, invoke `cultural' or `normative' differences between classes or genders to account for why they differ in their typical educational decisions (though we have something to say about the role of norms in such an account). Because the model is presented mathematically, testable corollaries are easy to derive as are other implications of our model for patterns of relevant behaviour.

In this article we use recent survey data to test three arguments on the relationship between social stratification and cultural consumption: i.e. what we label as the homology, individualization and omnivore-univore arguments. We note various conceptual and methodological problems in the ways these arguments have been advanced, and stress in particular the importance of maintaining the Weberian distinction between class and status. We concentrate on musical consumption and apply latent class models to identify types of musical consumer. We then examine the social character of these types through a regression analysis that includes a range of demographic and stratification variables. As would be anticipated from a Weberian standpoint, type of musical consumption proves to be more closely associated with status, and also with education, than with class. In general, our results provide little support for the homology or individualisation arguments. They are more consonant with the omnivore-univore argument, although a number of qualifications to this are also suggested.

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