Cross-national test of the hypothesis that cultural individualization mitigates social-origin inequalities in educational attainment

Abstract

This study evaluates whether cross-national variation in inequality of educational opportunity can be attributed to cultural individualization, as posited by a modernization theoretical hypothesis that predicts weaker associations between educational attainment and social-origin characteristics where prevailing culture prioritizes self-expressive autonomy over social conformity. Using individual-level data for late-20th-century birth cohorts from 72 countries, parental education serves as the social-origin indicator, and two established cultural indices (Welzel’s emancipative values and Schwartz’s autonomy-embeddedness) capture society-level individualization. Ordinary least squares and hierarchical regressions relate these indices to two standard measures of inequality of educational opportunity while adjusting for a composite modernization index and additional contextual controls. Bivariate comparisons show that more individualized societies display smaller origin-based gaps in educational attainment, but the association disappears once modernization covariates are included. Neither cultural index explains residual cross-national inequality of educational opportunity variation under these specifications, whereas the modernization index predicts both stronger alignment with individualized culture and weaker intergenerational dependence in education. Contrary to the evaluated hypothesis, these findings indicate that cultural individualization and reduced inequality of educational opportunity are co-occurring yet causally unrelated outcomes of modernization. The results caution against treating cultural individualization as a driver of educational equality and suggest that cross-national variation is better explained with reference to other modernization processes.