The Effects of Educational Achievement Process on Status Attainment

This paper intends to analyze the educational and occupational attainment process in Japan, using the data collected through the questionnaire survey in Tokyo in 1975. Two main objectives are:(1) to examine the objective opportunity structure in Japan, in terms of the degree to which socio-economic background factors are related to educational attainment and educational attainment and socio-economic background factors are related to occupational attainment, using the Blau-Duncan's basic path model; (2) to examine the mediating process through which socio-economic background factors influence educational attainment and then occupational attainment, using the extended path model which includes various psychological and ecological variables as well as basic status variables.The major findings are as follows: (1) Educational attainment is influenced by such socio-economic backgroundfactors as father's occupation (.247) and father's education (.347)with R2=.274; Respondent's first occupation is strongly influenced byhis educational attainment (.484), while the importance of father'soccupation is rather small (.150); Similarly, respondent's current occupationis most strongly influenced by his first occupation (.347) and then byhis educational attainment (.293), while father's occupation has the smalldirect effect on occupational attainment (.084). It should be pointed out, however, that the total causal effect of father's occupation on respondent'scurrent occupation is significantly large (.336). (2) With respect to educational attainment process, it is found that thefollowing variables play significant roles in the mediating process; that is, cognitive ability measured by scholastic performance at the 6th grade ofelementary school, extra preparatory education such as tutoring and Juku, parents' expectation and encouragement, subjective evaluation of familyeconomic condition, and educational aspiration. It would be interestingthat mother's education level takes a very unique part in this mediatingprocess, particularly influencing respondent's subjective evaluation of hiseconomic condition, extra preparatory education, and parents' expectationand encouragement. Ecological variables such as age and regional remotenesshave also significant effects on educational attainment. With respect to the occupational attainment process, educational levelhas an important effect on occupational attainment, both on the firstand on the current occupation, while cognitive ability