Project management: Prof. Dr. Steffen Hilmert

PhD candidate: Marc Schwenzer M. A.

This PhD project will conduct a comparative and quantitative study of the effects of varying national conditions on the unequal distribution and ‘inheritance’ of resources and the differences in status marked by them. The central question is how specific national contexts influenced the mediation of status, acquired by education, during the recent decades. For a start a distinction will be made, between groups rich in resources and others with limited access to them. The definition will be based on differences in education, income and assets. Applying a simple model, it will be assumed that easy access to collective resources influences the use and inter-generational transfer of private resources (like for example cultural capital, specific to a certain family).

During its initial phase the project is mainly concerned with the influence of institutional context factors and a valid operationalising of status inheritance by education. In a later phase the focus will be on the influence of collective social capital.