Family background and cultural lifestyles: Multigenerational associations

•We analyze the association between family background and cultural lifestyles in three generations.•We use indicators of parents’ and grandparents’ economic, cultural, and social capital to capture family background.•We identify four cultural lifestyles in the grandchild generation emphasizing omnivorous, middlebrow, popular, and low cultural consumption.•Grandparents’ capital is associated with grandchildren's lifestyles both directly and indirectly via parents’ capital.•Among the three forms of capital, grandparents’ cultural capital is most strongly associated with grandchildren's lifestyles. Does family background link to cultural lifestyles beyond two generations? To address this question, we analyze three-generation data from Denmark with information on cultural consumption in the grandchild generation and information on economic, cultural, and social capital in the parent and grandparent generation. We report three key findings. First, we identify four cultural lifestyles in the grandchild generation (omnivore, middlebrow, popular, and inactive). Second, grandparents’ cultural capital is directly and positively associated with the likelihood that grandchildren exhibit the omnivorous lifestyle. Third, grandparents’ economic, cultural, and social capital also operate indirectly by being positively associated with parents’ cultural capital, which in turn is associated with the likelihood that grandchildren exhibit the omnivorous cultural lifestyle. Our results suggest that family background extends beyond two generations and that ancestors’ cultural capital has dynastic properties.