Equality of opportunity is a central aim in the political agenda of many nations, andpolitical leaders consequently speak about the importance of reducing differences ineducational attainment between young persons from differing social origins. Suchdifferences are apparent at two educational steps–the transition from compulsoryschool to upper secondary and at the transition from upper secondary school totertiary institutions. Both steps have to be considered if the interest lies in attainmentof university degrees, since the outcome at the first transition affects that at thesecond. Differences in educational attainment by parental origin appear throughtwo separate mechanisms. Children from higher origins tend to perform better atschool than other children, and consequently they more than others continue tohigher educational levels. However, also among children who did perform equallywell, children from more advantaged origins more often than other children chooseto continue to higher and more academically oriented tracks. Children of immigrantstend to perform less well at school than native-born children, but given performance,they tend more than the native-born to choose to continue in academically orientedschool tracks.

Recent research into educational inequalities has shown the importance of decomposing social origins into parental class, status and education, representing economic, socio-cultural and educational family resources, respectively. But we know little about how inequalities in educational attainment at the micro-level map onto institutional characteristics of educational systems at the macro-level, if we treat social origins in a multidimensional way. Drawing on the rich over-time variation in educational systems in four European countries–Britain, Sweden, Germany and Italy–this paper develops and tests a number of hypotheses regarding the effects of various components of social origins on individuals’ educational attainment in different institutional contexts. It is evident from our results that a great deal of similarity exists across nations with different educational systems inthe persisting importance for individuals’ educational attainment of parental class, status and education. But our findings also indicate that changes in the institutional features of educational systems have, in some instances although not in others, served to reinforce or to offset the social processes generating educational inequalities at the micro level.

Do separate factors of the social background – parental education, social class, social status and earnings – affect educational attainment independently of each other and to what extent is the association between these background factors and educational attainment transmitted via cognitive ability? Close to 28,000 randomly selected Swedish school children participated in a test of cognitive ability at age 13. Information on the four origin factors and on the children’s highest level of education was collected from Swedish registers with few missing data. The data were analysed by means of ordinary least squares regression. Parental education and social class are more highly associated with educational attainment than parental status and earnings, but all four factors have an effect on level of education independently of each other and of cognitive ability at age 13. Between 16 and 19 percent of the variance in education is accounted for by the social origin factors. Around one third of the effects of the origin factors is transmitted via cognitive ability. The paper ends with a short discussion of possible mechanisms, other than cognitive ability, that link social background with education.