Bonding ties that get ahead?: family social capital and early occupational attainment

Abstract

Parents shape their children’s outcomes through multiple avenues. Parental human and financial capital are well known to influence children’s occupational attainment by enabling investments in education, institutional knowledge, and labor market advantages. Other forms of parental investment, such as emotional support and time, also shape children’s outcomes. In this article, we examine whether and how family social capital sourced from parents is associated with young adults’ early occupational attainment. We advance two hypotheses. First, because family social capital improves adolescents’ academic performance and access to higher education, we expect it to translate into higher occupational attainment. Second, because more prestigious jobs are often accessed through weak social ties, we hypothesize that strongly tied family social capital is associated with lower occupational prestige than weaker or moderately tied family ties. Using longitudinal random-effects models and data from the Transition to Adulthood Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find that low levels of family social capital increase occupational prestige, while strongly tied family social capital decreases it. We discuss implications for research on parental resources and adolescent development.