The Impact of the Great Recession on Educational Expectations: Cross-National Trends in Social and Cognitive Inequalities

Does the Great Recession impact inequality of educational outcomes? Although contributions on the effects of the global crisis on a number of social aspects have started to emerge (e.g., Grusky et al., 2011), little is known about how inequality of educational attainment is affected by macro level trends such as changes in the economic cycle or in unemployment rates. This paper aims to elucidate the interplay of family background, educational expectations (conditional on cognitive skills) and the economic context. Our main research question is, hence: has the impact of family background on offspring's educational outcomes become stronger because of lackluster economic growth?

Using pooled data from TIMSS 2003, 2007 and 2011 – an international survey project of competences among 8^th grade students– we estimate a set of (multi-level) random constant linear regression models on the expected level of educational attainment. The study covers 24 affluent countries. The recent economic downturn has affected advanced economies to a different extent, producing substantial variation in the context conditions in which educational expectations are formulated. This longitudinal and comparative setup thus provides the opportunity to improve our understanding of the driving forces of unequal educational trajectories of children at the end of compulsory education. Moreover, by examining expectations we take a look into the future of educational inequities.

Our results confirm the existence of systematic cross-country regularities and suggest that economic down times lead to an overall reduction in expectations among students. Recessions also boost educational inequalities by meaningful indicators of student background. Furthermore, our findings indicate that the influence of economic resources on educational expectations is less sensitive to economic growth than the influence of parental education. At the same time, cognitive skills emerge as a crucial mediating variable of the relation between economic context and family background effects on educational careers.