Abstract
We respond to Brady, Luft, and Zuckerman Sivan’s critique of how religious subcultures—particularly Jewish upbringing—shape educational attainment. Their reanalysis, while differently specified, reinforces our central finding: adolescents with Jewish upbringing demonstrate higher rates of college completion and selective institution attendance. We defend our use of a multidimensional SES index—including income, education, and occupational prestige—grounded in stratification research, and we consider the theoretical and empirical utility of their proposed alternatives. Yet their replication overlooks the qualitative evidence central to our argument: the role of self-concept congruence, or the alignment between one’s identity and educational trajectory. Among girls with at least one Jewish parent, we find that attending a selective college is not simply an instrumental goal but part of who they envision themselves becoming. This congruence is shaped by a habitus rooted not only in social class but also in Jewish upbringing. In contrast, similarly positioned non-Jewish peers do not express the same identity-education alignment. We also respond to their concern that our work risks essentialism or reflects “culture of poverty” arguments. Our study explicitly avoids attributing educational outcomes to ascribed group identity. Instead, we identify clear, transferable mechanisms, including habitus and self-concept congruence, through which religious subcultures influence educational trajectories. These mechanisms are socially transmitted, shaped by family culture and broader structural contexts, and portable across groups and settings. By addressing these critiques, we contribute to debates about how culture shapes stratification without reducing outcomes to group-based determinism.
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