Work

Diminishing Returns to Psychological Resources in the Attainment Process? A Study of Educational Plans Across Generations

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: The principles of agency and time and place are key tenets of the life course perspective. The development of educational goals, a highly impactful agentic process, is generally considered in universalistic terms, however, without consideration of the historical context of opportunity. In this article, we address two research questions. First, do psychological dimensions reflective of agency (optimism, self-esteem, and the academic self-concept) foster teenagers' educational plans? Second, has the predictive power of these agentic resources changed in recent decades? We address these questions using data from the Youth Development Study, including a cohort of teenagers followed from the late 1980s and since 2009, a panel of their adolescent children. Results from ordinal logistic regressions confirm our hypothesis that agency is more important for educational plans in times of economic stability and opportunity (second generation) than in times of instability and precarity (children of the early second-generation child bearers).

Source: Social Psychology Quarterly

DOI: 10.1177/01902725251394032

Authors: Arnaldo Mont’Alvao, Jeylan T. Mortimer

Institutions: Iowa State University, University of Minnesota

Language: English

Topic: Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, National Institute of Mental Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development