*Please direct all correspondence to the author at the Department of Sociology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, e-mail: wanner@ucalgary.ca. Portions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association in St. Catharines, Ontario in June 1996. The research was completed while the author was a visiting scholar at the University of Trento (Italy), and was supported in part by an operating grant from the Research Grants Committee of the University of Calgary. I would like to thank Pierre Turcotte, Cycle Manager of Statistics Canada's General Social Survey, for providing me with an age recode that made this analysis possible, and R ibert Stebbins for his translation of the abstract. The manuscript of this article was submitted in Nove nber 1997 and accepted in January 1999.
Expansion and Ascription: Trends in Educational Opportunity in Canada, 1920–1994*
Article first published online: 14 JUL 2008
DOI: 10.1111/j.1755-618X.1999.tb00582.x
Issue
Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie
Volume 36, Issue 3, pages 409–442, August 1999
Additional Information
How to Cite
Wanner, R. A. (1999), Expansion and Ascription: Trends in Educational Opportunity in Canada, 1920–1994. Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie, 36: 409–442. doi: 10.1111/j.1755-618X.1999.tb00582.x
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Publication History
- Issue published online: 14 JUL 2008
- Article first published online: 14 JUL 2008
- Abstract
- References
- Cited By
En appliquant des méthodes de cohorte aux données en provenance de l'Enquête sur la mobilité canadienne de 1973 et des Enquêtes générates sociales de 1986 et 1994 effectuées par Statistique Canada, cet article examine si l'accroissement spectaculaire des chances éducationnelles qui a eu lieu pendant les années 50 et 60 a réduit les effets de statut, de sexe et de langue maternelle sur le nombre d'années de scolarité obtenues au Québec et ailleurs au Canada. Des modèles de régression linéaire prédisant le niveau de scolarité et des régressions logistiques prédisant la probabilité des transitions éducationnelles spécifiques sont utilisés pour séparer l'effet d'ac-croissement de celui d'ascription. Conformément à la théorie de la reproduction culturelle, l'ascription par voie de couche sociale reste invariable avec le temps, mais les effets de sexe et de langue, telle-ment marqués auprès des cohortes plus âgées, sont négligeables auprès des cohortes plus jeunes. Quoiqu'il y ait quelques différences fines, ces résultats sont semblables au Québec et ailleurs au Canada.
Applying cohort methods to data from the 1973 Canadian Mobility Study and the 1986 and 1994 Statistics Canada General Social Surveys, this paper determines whether the dramatic educational expansion of the 1950s and 1960s reduced the effects of parental socio-economic status, gender and language first spoken on educational attainment in Quebec and the rest of Canada. Linear regression models predicting years of schooling and logistic regressions predicting the probability of specific educational transitions are used to separate the effects of expansion and ascription. Consistent with cultural reproduction theory, class-based ascription remains constant over time, but the effects of gender and language, so pronounced in older cohorts, are negligible in more recent cohorts. Although there are some differences in detail, these basic results are similar in Quebec and the rest of Canada.