Revisiting the Breen–Goldthorpe Model of educational stratification

Abstract

We present an extension of the classic rational choice model for educational decisions that is able to explain recent empirical findings by Gabay-Egozi et al. who established that Israeli students from disadvantaged social strata tend to hedge long-term utility with short-term risk when choosing among subjects for their matriculation exams. Adding to that, we show that the assumption of relative risk aversion as formulated in the Breen-Goldthorpe Model can be relaxed to a significant degree without losing its explanatory power regarding the persistence of class differentials in educational choices. This fact casts considerable doubt on the measurement of relative risk aversion in empirical research on the Breen-Goldthorpe Model and hence on the interpretation of the results of such studies.

Relative risk aversion models: How plausible are their assumptions?

“…For instance, the model can easily incorporate more than two alternatives (e.g. an intermediate secondary school track), and it can be applied to sequential decisions via backward induction, such as choosing among secondary school tracks the one that maximises the chances of attaining a tertiary degree and reaching the upper class (Tutic, 2017).…”

“…The second core assumption of the BG model is that educational decisions are exclusively driven by the concern to avoid downward mobility (Downward Mobility Assumption). This means that families would not differentiate between immobility, short-range upward mobility and long-range upward mobility (Tutic, 2017). For instance, for working-class parents, it would be indifferent that their children stay in the working class, reach white-collar jobs or upper-class jobs: the only relevant concern would be that they avoid descending into the unskilled jobs of the underclass.…”

“…These measures failed to mediate social origin differentials in educational choices. It has been noted that this empirical strategy can be problematic (Barone et al, 2018;Tutic, 2017). In RRA models, RRA is supposed to be constant across social classes.…”

“…Second, Breen and Yaish (2006, BY henceforth) have proposed a reformulation of the BG model that relies more systematically on prospect theory than the original model (Tutic, 2017). With less than one tenth of the citations of the original model, it is fair to say that this reformulation has attracted much less attention.…”

To leave or not to leave? Understanding the support for the United Kingdom membership in the European Union: Identity, attitudes towards the political system and socio-economic status

“…Alternatively, it is possible that analysing those decision rules will require exploring factors which have been neglected by existing research. Research shows that decision making mechanisms depend not only on the motivational drivers, but also on the perceived ability to achieve the desired goal (Breen and Yaish, 2006; Tutić, 2017), including political ones (Craig, 1993; Gil de Zúñiga et al, 2017; Southwell, 2012). As important as this result is, existing research on the support for EU has neglected this aspect of decision making.…”