2025/01/03 by Alexander Zahl‐Thanem, Arild Blekesaune · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies #Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies #School Choice and Performance
paper · doi:10.1177/00016993241305615
openalex publication_date 2025/01/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
This study focuses on the interplay between social origin, location and students’ educational choices. In particular, by using population-wide administrative data from Norway focusing on students’ school track choices in upper secondary education, we aim to gain insight into the complex dynamics through which social origin and location intersect in shaping students’ educational choices. In doing so, we aim to contribute to the current literature on spatial inequality in education, which has often treated students outside larger cities as a homogeneous group. The results show that rural students choose vocational tracks over academic tracks more frequently than do their urban counterparts and that this is not simply a reflection of spatial differences in socioeconomic resources. We find that urban-rural differences are less pronounced among students whose parents have higher levels of education but are considerably more pronounced among students whose parents are less educated. However, rural students from higher educational origins still appear less likely to choose academic tracks than their urban counterparts with similar educational backgrounds. By differentiating between the primary and secondary effects of social origin, we discuss how these patterns relate to differences in school performance and educational choices arising from different cost-benefit and risk assessments.