Socioeconomic (dis)continuity across generations: The role of adolescent behavioral control and social competence

Abstract

Relatively little is known about which individual competencies help determine if adolescents experience social reproduction or social mobility. Consequently, it remains a challenge to identify effective policies that improve equality of opportunity. For example, in some societies that perceive themselves as meritocratic such as the U.S. (Fergusson et al., 2008) and the Netherlands (Zumbuehl et al., 2022), the educational level in which adolescents are stratified still largely depend on socioeconomic background. Hence, a further exploration of individual competencies relevant for social reproduction and social mobility is essential for better understanding how adolescents attain their socioeconomic status as young adults. The purpose of this dissertation was to advance our understanding of the role of adolescent psychosocial competencies in the relationship between parental SES and young adulthood SES. To this end, we assessed the extent to which adolescents’ behavioral control and social competence affect social reproduction and social mobility. Combining all findings, we conclude that socioeconomic differences in behavioral control were small to none, and therefore behavioral control appears to play no role in social reproduction. Behavioral control did however have a positive direct effect on young adulthood SES outcomes (educational attainment in particular), but not more so for adolescents with a low parental SES than for those with a high parental SES. Hence, adolescents with a lower parental SES and high levels of behavioral control are more likely to attain a higher SES in young adulthood than their parents – thus experiencing intergenerational social mobility – but are unlikely to catch up to adolescents with a high parental SES and high levels of behavioral control. Social competence was mostly unrelated to both parental SES and young adulthood SES, and therefore appears to play no role in social reproduction or social mobility. Our findings indicate that adolescent psychosocial competencies have a modest impact on the attainment of young adulthood SES, while the positive effect of parental SES on young adulthood SES remains prominent. Hence, more structural solutions that go beyond the individual adolescent’s responsibility may be required to further attenuate the predominant effect of parental SES on young adulthood SES. The findings in this dissertation are considerably affected by socioeconomic differences in participant inclusion and retention. In particular, families with a lower SES were less likely to participate in our studies and also more likely to drop out across waves. Considering that for example adolescents with low levels of behavioral control were also more likely to drop out, we may be missing crucial data which potentially has far-reaching consequences for research conclusions and their generalizability to the population. If more families and adolescents with a lower SES could have been included and retained, we may have found associations between parental SES, adolescent behavioral control and social competence, and young adulthood SES to be more in line with principles of social reproduction or social mobility. The inclusion and retention challenges experienced in our samples are not unique in the field of developmental psychology, though a critical reflection on its consequences sometimes is.