Egalitarian Australia? Associations between family wealth and outcomes in young adulthood

Abstract

Despite a widely held belief that Australia is an egalitarian society where social origin is less important than in many other advanced economies, previous research shows that there is an enduring association between socioeconomic status, as measured by parental education, and child’s educational attainment. Less attention has been paid to the effects of another indicator of socioeconomic status, namely family wealth, on educational attainment. In this article, I examine associations between parental wealth and educational attainment, occupational prestige and wealth in young adulthood using data from the Housing, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) project collected in 2002 and 2014. The results show that high levels of family wealth are associated with higher levels of educational attainment, occupational prestige and individual wealth in young adulthood.