The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of ascribed status on individuals' educational attainment. This study differs from the previous research in two ways : 1) It employs a measure of educational attainment that takes into account differentiation of higher education (i.e., university ranking); 2) The parental effect is analyzed at the household level, instead of treating father's and mother's effect separately, by examining the combination of both parents' educational background.
The analysis used data from the survey conducted in Tokyo in Nov. 1992, on randomly selected females between 35 and 49 years of age. In accordance with P. Bourdieu' s Reproduction Theory, intergenerational succession of educational attainment was confirmed in the form of school ranking even among those with higher education. However, the association between the parents' education and those of children were not always monotonic. Nonmonotonic associations were observed when the effects of parents were examined using a household-level variable. The results suggest that intergenerational succession of educational attainment carries beyond what we observe simply in the number of years in school.