We begin our review of the Cultural Capital literature with Kalmijn & Kraaykamp (1996). The authors investigate the association between racial inequality and schooling in addition to whether ethnic cultural exclusion has occurred over time. To conduct the analysis, the authors derive a sample from the US Survey of Public Participation in the Arts97 (SPPA), which was undertaken in conjunction with the National Crime Survey. Specifically, those individuals (specifically black or non-Hispanic white people aged 25 and over) selected to participate in the 1982 or 1985 sweeps were surveyed. Kalmijn & Kraaykamp operationalise parental Cultural Capital by using the un-weighted average score derived from four variables: whether parents attended classical music performances, plays, art museums and whether they encouraged the participant to read. Two sets of models are estimated using multivariate analysis. The first of which models the determinants of parental Cultural Capital, whilst the second set years of schooling completed. The authors control for parental schooling, cohort, race, parental education, rural residence, gender and select interactions. The results show that Arts participation has a positive association with schooling. They also reveal that parental cultural resources and years of schooling for both black and white people have increased over time between 1900 and 1960, but this increase has been faster for black people. The authors conclude therefore that there has been a convergence in years of schooling completed between black and white people.
97 The SPPA was conducted on a subset of households surveyed in the larger National Crime
Survey. Specifically, one in twelve National Crime Survey households were asked to respond. Participants were asked an additional question set relating to the frequency of Arts participation in the last year.
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Aschaffenburg & Maas (1997) investigate whether Cultural Capital is associated with educational transition in the US. Similar to Kalmijn & Kraaykamp (1996), the authors utilise the SPPA, a sample of those drawn from the 1982, 1985 and 1992 sweeps. To conduct the analysis, the authors estimate four sets of logistic regressions (calculating odds ratios) for four educational transitions: early-years education through to high school, attending high school through to completion, high school completion to college attendance and college attendance through to graduation. The authors construct measures of both the parents’ and participant’s Cultural Capital. Specifically, parental Cultural Capital is operationalised through a composite measure of average participation across four activities: listening to classical music or opera, visiting art museums/galleries, attending performances and encouraging the participant to read. For participants, Cultural Capital was operationalised: firstly, by whether they took lessons in one of five cultural domains. These were music, visual Arts, performance, appreciation and history for Arts and Music separately; secondly, by the context in which these lessons took place, i.e. school, outside of school or both. The authors control for gender, age, race and include separate variables for father’s and mother’s education. The results reveal that Cultural Capital (both child and parents’) is positively associated with the likelihood of educational progression at each stage. They also observe a declining impact of Cultural Capital for each subsequent educational transition, particularly for parental measures of Cultural Capital. Context also appears to matter, with cultural lessons outside school exerting a larger impact. They do, however, note a resurgence of a stronger positive Cultural Capital association with college attendance. Stating that this resurgence probably reflects the college application process.
De Graaf et al. (2000) attempt to refine the Cultural Capital perspective by exploring the role of parental Cultural Capital on educational attainment in the Netherlands. To conduct the analysis, the authors utilise a sample of 1,000 18 to 64 year old residents and their spouses derived from the Netherlands Family Survey Registry98 in 1992. OLS is used to estimate five models of children’s educational attainment, measured in years. The authors include controls for cohort, gender, single parent household, parental education, father’s occupational status and household income. Specifically, they operationalise parents’ Cultural Capital through two sets of five variables relating to
98 The Netherlands Family Survey is a multi-stage survey, designed to capture information on a
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parental Arts participation99 and reading habits100. Mean scores were used to create three within-cohort ranking indices. The first combined all 10 variables, whereas the remaining two contained only five variables relating to either parental Arts participation or reading habits. The results indicate that higher parental Cultural Capital is positively associated with later child educational success, particularly amongst those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Indeed, Cultural Capital appears to be a more important determinant than familial background with respect to educational attainment in the Netherlands. De Graaf et al. (2000) propose two mechanisms which could account for this. The first is based on the intergenerational transfer of educational skills from parents to children and the other is based on the replication of the school cultural climate in the home.
Sullivan (2001) assesses the implications of CRT. They do this by examining the distribution of Cultural Capital by class and educational level, intergenerational transmission (noting observable differences by gender) and its association with GCSE attainment in the UK. The author utilises responses from four school-based surveys101 of British final year school pupils in 1998 (age 15 to 16), supplemented later with their respective GCSE examination results. The author operationalises the young person’s Cultural Capital by scoring a young person in three cultural dimensions: leisure activities (reading habits, programmes watched, music listened to, attending galleries, theatre or concerts), knowledge of cultural figures (test of famous people) and language (active and passive vocabulary scores). Parents’ Cultural Capital was operationalised by asking the young person to comment upon their parents: reading, music listening habits, public events attendance and topics discussed in the home. For the main analysis the author estimates four linear models to determine the influences on pupils’ cultural activities, language score, knowledge score and GCSE attainment. These models control for parental qualifications, social class, students’ gender, school dummy, parents’ and students’ cultural activities, cultural knowledge and vocabulary. The results provide strong evidence to suggest the existence of differences in Cultural Capital endowments by social class and parental education. Furthermore, the findings broadly support the intergenerational transmission of Cultural Capital, with this contributing positively to
99 Parental Arts participation included: visits to art galleries, museums, opera or ballet
performances, theatrical performances and classical concerts.
100 Parental reading habits included: regional or historic novels; thrillers, Science or war novels;
Dutch literature; translated literature; and finally literature in a foreign language.
101 The participants were drawn from four comprehensive schools, two of which are single-sex.
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educational attainment at GCSE. Nevertheless, social class and gender remain significant, even after controlling for Cultural Capital. CRT, therefore, only appears to offer a partial explanation.
Dumais (2002) investigates the associations between Cultural Capital, gender and school success of 8th grade students (age 13 to 14) from the NELS in the US. The sample is limited to white people, to avoid complex interactions between culture and ethnicity. To conduct the analysis, the author utilises a mixture of econometric techniques, namely OLS with and without metric coefficients and fixed effects, to produce pooled within- pupil regression estimates. Unlike the other studies mentioned, a measure of Habitus is included. This is captured via a dummy based on a student’s future occupational expectation. Cultural Capital is operationalised using a variable which reflects the sum of parental responses confirming their child’s participation in six cultural activities. Namely, participation in: art, music, dance lessons, attending concerts/other musical events, visiting museums and reading (whether borrowed books from the public library). The author also controls separately for gender, socioeconomic status, cognitive ability and Grade Point Average (GPA). The results reveal that ability, as expected, plays the most significant role with respect to educational attainment. Interestingly, Habitus is shown to have a larger association than Cultural Capital. Nevertheless, the Cultural Capital association does appear to vary by gender. For instance, Cultural Capital is shown to exhibit a smaller positive association for young women, whereas for young men they find the opposite albeit only significant in the fixed effect specifications. The author hypothesises that young men may downplay their Cultural Capital in order to avoid looking effeminate in the eyes of their peers, whereas young women may emphasise it in order to gain more support from teachers (teacher-selection effect).
Kaufman & Gabler (2004) investigate the role that extra-curricular activities play with respect to the probability of attending college or university in the US and whether it is classified as elite. The authors classify an institution as elite if it features in one of four groups in the 1992 US News and World Report’s guide to colleges; namely the 25 top- ranked or competitive colleges and universities. Specifically, the authors test four theoretical propositions: Credentialing102, Cultural Capital, Socialisation103 and HCT. To
102 Credentialing was developed by Collins (1979) and differs from Cultural Capital Theory in
that an individual need only appear to have cultural qualities and traits without actually possessing them.
103 Socialisation implies that an individual’s proficiency with culture ensures that they have made
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conduct the analysis, the authors utilise a sample derived from the NELS, specifically those responding to the 1988, 1990, 1992 and 1994 sweeps. For similar reasons to Dumais (2002), they limit their sample to white people to avoid complex interactions between culture and ethnicity. Specifically, Kaufman & Gabler (2004) operationalise Cultural Capital through the inclusion of a series of dummy variables relating to parental, child or joint participation in art, music and dance lessons outside of school. Further variables were included which indicated if parents, their child or both together took part in or visited: the public library, music concerts/events and art museums; in addition to if the child took music, art, language or dance classes outside of school. Lastly, whether the child participated in a number of extracurricular activities within school104. Methodologically, the authors estimate probit models (with robust standard errors to address data clustering by school) in order to estimate the probability of HE participation. They include the following controls: socioeconomic status, gender, parental involvement in school life, self-esteem, school poverty, English fluency, standardised test scores, grades and rural variables. These models were also estimated separately by gender to capture any gender-specific differences. From the results, they find that participation in various activities and/or classes increases an individual’s probability of attending college by bolstering educational attainment. This association is stronger for those aged between 15 and 16. Participation in and training in the Arts by the participant does not, however, lead to a higher probability of attending elite colleges, although a parents’ interest in the Arts does.
To summarise, it is clear from the studies we reviewed that most researchers elected to operationalise Cultural Capital through Arts, cultural participation and reading habits. There were, however, a few exceptions: Dumais (2002) makes the distinction between ‘low’ and ‘high-brow’ cultural activities. Aschaffenburg & Maas (1997), alternatively, opt to operationalise the concept via cultural participation. Lastly, Sullivan (2001) makes provision to incorporate cultural knowledge and language in addition to Arts participation. Most authors, with the exclusion of Kaufman & Gabler (2004) - who include a series of dummy variables, include a composite measure in their empirical analysis which represents either a ranking within the reference cohort, an average score for participation or engagement in a range of activities.
104 These related to: interscholastic team and/or individual sports, school team and/or sports, team
support vocations (e.g. cheerleading), playing musical instruments, theatrical performances, student government activities, academic honour societies, journalism, service exchange clubs, subject-specific societies and general interest clubs.
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The evidence presented indicates that Cultural Capital has a positive association with youth outcomes. We did however note some significant differences by gender (Dumais, 2002). Concerning gender, Cultural Capital association appears stronger for females. With respect to ethnicity, cultural resources were found to narrow the attainment gap between black and white young persons from the 1900s to 1960s. For instance, Aschaffenburg & Maas (1997) present evidence that indicates Cultural Capital has a declining but positive association each subsequent educational transition (excluding college). Moreover, Kaufman & Gabler (2004) present evidence which implies that individuals with more Cultural Capital are able to better distinguish themselves raising their likelihood of being accepted at an elite institution. Aside from demonstrating that Cultural Capital has a positive association with attainment, De Graff et al. (2000) also find that this is stronger than that exhibited by family background. Nevertheless, it is important to note here that their study was conducted in the Netherlands which is a more egalitarian country, compared to the US or UK. Lastly, Sullivan (2000) also presents evidence to suggest that Cultural Capital may facilitate upwards mobility for individuals from poorer backgrounds which supports DiMaggio’s (1982) Cultural Mobility hypothesis.
To conclude, we have presented evidence that Cultural Capital (with and without Habitus) has a positive association with various educational outcomes. Parental Cultural Capital also appears to be initially influential but declines in importance with each educational transition, up until but not including HE. What should however be clear from these contributions is that a more thorough comprehension of cultural influences in a UK context may have the potential to contribute to better understanding UK HE participation. Particularly when we consider that most of the research was conducted in the US and evident structural differences between the educational systems105.
105 The US HE sector has a number of features that distinguish it from that of the British system:
firstly, the US has a higher prevalence of sport-related scholarship programs. These may be instrumental with respect to the formation and value of Cultural or Social Capital. Secondly, historically US student fees are much more differentiated and could be multiples of what British students would then of had to pay. Thirdly, the student loans system in the US is less equitable than the British system. Fourthly, students in the US are ranked based upon a measure of average performance, i.e. GPA. This contrasts with British students who are judged largely on their results of high stakes exams at age 16 and 18. Lastly, the UK operates a pre-examination, system, i.e. namely, students typically apply at the age 18, and before their A-level results are announced. Offers by institutions are sent before results are released and then confirmed, conditional upon satisfactory exam performance.