The impact of parental education on the high school and postsecondary education transitions of Canadian youth

Canadian research in the social inequality of education has established that there is a strong and persistent relationship between parental education and offspring's educational attainment. This research has primarily focused on the adult population, and has been driven by questions relating to cohort comparisons, the relative effects of parental occupation versus education, as well as the differential effects of mothers' and fathers' education on sons and daughters. There has been very little research that has examined the factors that mediate the relationship between parental education and offspring's education attainment. Drawing on Coleman's social capital theory, this dissertation examined the role played by social capital and high school academic achievement in accounting for the relationship between parental education and offspring's educational transitions in the Canadian youth population.;The School Leavers Survey and the School Leavers Follow-up Survey, as well as the National Graduates Surveys and Follow-up Surveys, were used to examine the above questions. Modifying Mare's educational transition model, a series of discrete educational transitions were examined, starting with participation in private high school versus public high school and ending with the upper level educational transitions of young community college and bachelor's graduates. Parental education had a significant impact on all of offspring's educational transitions, with the exception of postsecondary leaving. There was no evidence to support the hypothesis that parental education affected offspring's high school and postsecondary transitions by operating primarily through high school-related social capital or high school academic achievement. For educational transitions above the high school level, the primary benefit came from having a parent with university education, and to a much lesser extent with a community college education.