Although originally developed by R.K. Merton to explain advancement in scientific careers, cumulative advantage is a general mechanism for inequality across any temporal process (e.g., life course, family generations) in which a favorable relative position becomes a resource that produces further relative gains. This review shows that the term cumulative advantage has developed multiple meanings in the sociological literature. We distinguish between these alternative forms, discuss mechanisms that have been proposed in the literature that may produce cumulative advantage, and review the empirical literature in the areas of education, careers, and related life course processes.

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Cumulative Advantage as a Mechanism for Inequality: A Review of Theoretical and Empirical Developments

Studies of how characteristics of the family of origin are associated with educational and labor market outcomes indicate the degree of openness of societies and have a long tradition in sociology. We review research published since 1990 into educational stratification and social (occupational or class) mobility, focusing on the importance of parental socioeconomic circumstances, and with particular emphasis on comparative studies. Large-scale data now available from many countries and several time points have led to more and better descriptions of inequality of opportunity across countries and over time. However, partly owing to problems of comparability of measurement, unambiguous conclusions about trends and ranking of countries have proven elusive. In addition, no strong evidence exists that explains intercountry differences. We conclude that the 1990s witnessed a resurgence of microlevel models, mostly of a rational choice type, that signals an increased interest in moving beyond description in strat...

Inequality of opportunity in comparative perspective : Recent research on educational attainment and social mobility

Education correlates strongly with most important social and economic outcomes such as economic success, health, family stability, and social connections. Theories of stratification and selection created doubts about whether education actually caused good things to happen. Because schools and colleges select who continues and who does not, it was easy to imagine that education added little of substance. Evidence now tips the balance away from bias and selection and in favor of substance. Investments in education pay off for individuals in many ways. The size of the direct effect of education varies among individuals and demographic groups. Education affects individuals and groups who are less likely to pursue a college education more than traditional college students. A smaller literature on social returns to education indicates that communities, states, and nations also benefit from increased education of their populations; some estimates imply that the social returns exceed the private returns.

https://www.collegetransitions.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/hout-returns-to-college-education.pdf

Social and Economic Returns to College Education in the United States

Studies of the persistence of social stratification rely heavily on students’ experience in secondary schools. In this study, outcomes for a randomly selected panel of Baltimore children, followed from age 6 to age 22, demonstrate that first graders’ social contexts and personal resources explain educational attainment levels in early adulthood about as well as do similar resources measured in adolescence. Years of schooling and the highest level of school attempted respond most strongly to family SES, but parental psychological support and the child’s own temperament/disposition had substantial effects on first‐grade academic outcomes. The predictive power of race, gender, SES, and neighborhood quality measured in first grade on educational status at age 22 supports Lucas’s “effectively maintained inequality.”

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/428444

First Grade and Educational Attainment by Age 22: A New Story.

In their widely cited study, Shavit and Blossfeld report stability of socioeconomic inequalities in educational attainment over much of the 20th century in 11 out of 13 countries. This article outlines reasons why one might expect to find declining class inequalities in educational attainment, and, using a large data set, the authors analyze educational inequality among cohorts born in the first two-thirds of the 20th century in eight European countries. They find, as expected, a widespread decline in educational inequality between students coming from different social origins. Their results are robust to other possible choices of method and variables, and the authors offer some explanations of why their findings contradict Shavit and Blossfeld's conclusions.

/pdf/nonpersistent-inequality-in-educational-attainment-evidence-1mpcmstlh0.pdf

Nonpersistent inequality in educational attainment: evidence from eight European countries.

This article proposes a general explanation for social background‐related inequality. Educational attainment research indicates that the later an education transition, the lower the social background effect. While some suggest life course changes in the parent‐child relationship or between‐family competition explain this pattern, others contend the result is a statistical artifact, and that the analytic strategy presupposes agents are irrationally myopic. This article addresses these criticisms by framing educational transitions in terms of students' movement through the stratified curriculum. Students select their stratum, one of which is dropping out. To make these choices, they consider their most recent salient performance. Using time‐varying performance measures to predict students' track placement/school continuation sustains the validity of the educational transitions approach and suggests substantively important social background effects even for nearly universal transitions. Results are consisten...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/321300

Samuel R. Lucas

Papers

Effectively Maintained Inequality: Education Transitions, Track Mobility, and Social Background Effects1