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This chapter takes into account information about parents' education and political involvement and about the home political environment, which adds another dimension to the persistence of inequalities of political voice. These processes, in short, work across generations. Those who had well-educated parents are, for two reasons, more likely to be politically active as adults. For one thing, they are more likely to have grown up in politically stimulating homes with parents who were politically active and an environment of frequent political discussion. More important but less often noticed, because educational attainment is likely to be handed on across generations, those whose parents were well educated are more likely to become well educated themselves, with consequences for the acquisition of many other factors that encourage political participation.

This chapter, which uses statistical techniques to deal with sample-selection problems in order to determine the relative importance of primary and secondary effects in creating inequalities in Italy, considers the influence of parental class and education in creating inequalities in the transitions to upper secondary and tertiary education. It finds that there are very large inequalities related to social background, at both the level of upper secondary and tertiary education. Only a minority of children from the lowest backgrounds enroll in the academic track. Although all upper secondary school degrees provide access to university, completion of the academic track is a strong predictor of tertiary-education enrollment. Therefore, inequality at early stages of the school career carries over to university participation.

Drawing on sociological and psychological theoretical perspectives, this chapter elaborates on two research questions. How does parents' formal education influence children's internet use? And how does children's development by age interact with their family background in terms of an autonomous and competent use of the internet? The interrelation between these two processes, parental socialisation and development by age, helps us understand the interplay of children's activities in dealing with the internet and their parents' handling of that. The chapter first discusses the persistent importance of social inequality for information and communications technology (ICT) use in the industrialised countries. It then elaborates on a theoretical framework by discussing both children and parents' individual agency and how these are interlinked with respect to their societal status. Finally, based on the EU Kids Online dataset, it tests out the theoretical ideas and hypotheses and ask how parental socialisation shapes young people's online competences, and how children's development by age interacts with structural processes and dynamics of socialisation. Children with a lower socio-economic background agree that they know more about the internet than their parents, as these children might acquire internet skills often independently from their parents.

This chapter discusses overall trends in children's time doing homework and study. It analyses differences in trends associated with parental education to explore the extent to which trends in time doing homework and study reflect socio-economic differences in educational outcomes. Despite increasing levels of school attainment, children from lower socio-economic backgrounds overall persistently obtain fewer qualifications from school than those from relatively more advantaged families. The chapter also studies trends in children's time reading and their participation in a wide range of cultural activities, such as going to galleries and museums or the cinema and sporting events. Middle-class parents typically possess relatively high levels of cultural capital, evidenced in their relatively higher qualification and participation in different cultural practices, which may in turn help sustain socio-economic differences in educational outcomes for children.

Education is a multiplier right. Without education, other rights cannot be fully enjoyed. Education is also an accelerator right: it equips people to enter the labour force and participate in public life. However, education is not only an instrumental right. It should primarily be regarded as an intrinsic right, valuable in its own terms. Section II considers how the freedom, social, and equality components of the right are reflected in different human rights instruments, contrasting these to education in the Sustainable Development Goals. Section III considers the meaning of ‘free and compulsory’ education and particularly the paradoxical nature of a compulsory right. Section IV examines the complex contestations between the freedom and equality dimensions of the right, especially in the context of parental choice as to the religious, moral, or political nature of the right to education. Section V is concerned with the extent to which a human rights approach to education can be used to achieve quality education.

This chapter assesses IEO in relation to parental education in the Netherlands. It shows the contribution of primary and secondary effects to IEO in the transitions to upper secondary and tertiary education for cohorts of students born in the 1970s and later. The chapter provides an overview of the Dutch educational system and the distribution of students in educational tracks over time. Results show that the relative importance of secondary effects at the first transition at age 12 has decreased over time and now amounts to an average of 38 percent of total IEO at this transition. While secondary effects lose some of their power at this transition, their importance clearly grows at later educational transitions.

This study analyses the determinants of learning outcomes (measured as test scores). It reconfirms that socio-economic variables and parental education impact learning outcome. While mother’s education is an important factor in getting children to school, and keeping them there, this factor loses much of its significance when it comes to student achievement. Father’s education, on the other hand becomes a lot more important, even when controlling for paid tuition. Our study is restricted to government schools. This does not reduce the validity of the study since those who use such schools, still constitute a large majority of school-going children in India. Second, parents, who demonstrate a demand for education by making a choice and attendant sacrifices to send their children to private school, may theoretically be in a better position to then engage with the school and actualize better outcomes.

In this chapter, we turn to the risk behavior that appears to underlie many of the problems addressed so far. Low achievement in school has been shown to be an important predictor of substance abuse, delinquency, and early sexual intercourse. And as we will see, not only are many of the antecedents of poor school performance the same as those for other problem behaviors, so are the consequences. Moreover, low academic achievement is both a predictor and a consequence of other kinds of risk behavior, as well as being a problem in itself. Understanding the epidemiology of school failure and dropping out is fundamental to this book’s argument: that high-risk behaviors are interrelated and, therefore, interventions must be comprehensive. School failure is a process rather than a single risk event. A young person initiates hard drug use or has early unprotected sexual intercourse or first commits a delinquent act at a specific time and place. Usually these actions are voluntary and follow a personal decision (although they are heavily influenced by the social environment). Low achievement results from an array of forces, many of which are outside the control of the child. The quality of the school is, of course, a major factor, as are the actual classroom practices and attitudes of the teacher. Estimates of the risk of other problem behaviors can be projected based on individual characteristics. Children with certain attributes are more likely than others to get involved in certain behaviors. This is not necessarily the case for estimating the risk of school failure since the probabilities are conditioned by both individual characteristics and the quality of the school. Children from disadvantaged households have been shown to succeed in excellent schools, while some schools are so inadequate that success is an exception. Unlike the other behaviors, risk of educational failure is measured routinely for almost all children at frequent intervals. Report cards inform children about their progress and, in aggregate, these marks produce a grade point average for each student.

The previous four chapters have reviewed the consequences, antecedents, and numbers of adolescents at risk of behaviors in four distinct fields of study: delinquency, substance use, teenage pregnancy, and school failure. It should be apparent that these fields are interrelated since the same variables have emerged time and time again as consequences or antecedents of the diverse behaviors. In this chapter, the commonalities among these fields are analyzed and synthesized. First, we address the question of common antecedents or predictors of behavior. Then, we focus on the overlap in high-risk behavior. How many young people “do it all,” and how many don't do any of it? From the wealth of data presented in the preceding chapters and from studies that look at the co-occurrence of these behaviors, a “synthetic estimate” is created that quantifies target groups for comprehensive interventions. Chapters 3 to 6 presented summaries of the antecedents of the separate problem behaviors (see Tables 3.7, 4.7, 5.7, and 6.7). A large number of variables were identified in each category. However, some of the antecedents or predictors applied only to one or two of the behaviors. A summary of the four diverse fields of study yields six common characteristics that predict each of the problem behaviors: … 1. Age: Early initiation or occurrence of any behavior predicts heavy involvement in the behavior and more negative consequences. 2. Expectations for education and school grades: Doing poorly in school and expecting to do poorly in school are associated with all of the problem behaviors. 3. General behavior: Acting out, truancy, antisocial behavior, and other conduct disorders are related to each of the problem behaviors. 4. Peer influence: Having low resistance to peer influences and having friends who participate in the same behaviors are common to all of the behaviors. 5. Parental role: Having insufficient bonding to parents, having parents who do not monitor, supervise, offer guidance, or communicate with their children, and having parents who are either too authoritarian or too permissive are all strongly associated with the behaviors.…