Modes of reproduction in the Swedish economic elite: education strategies of the children of the top one per cent

ABSTRACT

Most sociological studies on the economic elite have focused on groups holding formal power in the economic field. In this paper, the Swedish economic elite is constructed in line with Thomas Piketty’s notions on the richest top one per cent, but the scope extended beyond the economic analysis by combining it with a sociological perspective. Differences within this distributional group are found in the volume and composition of economic capital – as well as in other forms of capital. The elite is structured by an opposition between, first, those holding large wealth and those receiving high-wage incomes and, second, between the established elite and newcomers. Moreover, many elite studies pay attention to the routes to elite position. This paper also examines modes of reproduction from elite positions, using the education strategies employed by children of the economic elite within Swedish higher education. Such strategies are more important – and narrow – for the children of the high-income elite, revealed by their overrepresentation at certain highly selective educational institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic elite
• reproduction
• economic capital
• education strategies
• Sweden

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Andreas Melldahl is a senior lecturer in Sociology of Education at the Department of Education, Uppsala University, and a researcher at Stockholm School of Economics Institute for Research and at Sociology of Education and Culture (SEC), Uppsala University. He has previously published research on contemporary and historical elites, especially cultural and economic elites. His doctoral thesis (2015) was devoted to changes in the distribution of education in Sweden during the twentieth century and the consequences for different social generations and social groups.

ORCID

Andreas Melldahl http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0100-9934

Notes

1 Bourdieu’s separation of the sites of production of the forms of capital (from the economic field, via the administrative and academic fields to the artistic field) and the elites populating them is somewhat resembling Baltzell’s more functionalistic typology of the three major kinds of elite he distinguishes:

(1) those who have a goal-integrating function (line or executive) which includes the men who decide the ends which the given social structure will strive to attain; (2) the technically equipped (staff or professional) whose function it is to provide the knowledge of the means through which those ends are achieved; and (3) those who perform the intellectual function in any society. The intellectuals neither make the decisions which determine the immediate goals of the society, nor provide technical knowledge or means; rather they are primarily concerned with values, morals, and ideas, in the large sense, or the normative and creative aspects of social life. (2009 [1958]: 32)

2 The wealth and incomes were measured in 1999, the year in which the children left elementary school and had to choose upper secondary school programme. The parents’ combined wages had to surpass roughly 1,200,000 SEK (equalling € 150,000 in the prices of 2014) or their wealth had to be greater than 10,700,000 SEK (€ 1,350,000).

3 The classification of most of the variables has followed similar distributional principles as the selection of the active population. The reference point for these variables, however, differs between the classification of the first generations’ assets and the classification of the second generations’ assets. In the first case, the grouping of the categories is made with reference to the wealth and income of all other grandparents having grandchildren born in 1983 (measured in 1968). If the paternal or maternal grandparent household had a wealth level in the top percentile, then they are assigned the category ‘GP-W: Top1’, if their wealth were in percentile 95–99, they are put in category ‘GP-W: Top5’, if lower in ‘GP-W: Lower’ (as a comparison 87 per cent of all grandparents with grandchildren born in 1983 are in this category). If both the paternal and maternal grandparents had wealth in the 95 percentile or greater, they are found in category ‘GP-W: Top5+’. The same principles have been used for grandparents’ income, although adapted to the fact that incomes in comparison to wealth are less unevenly distributed, therefore the second highest category is made wider. The classification of the first generation’s education is as follows: Compulsory schooling is ‘Low’, secondary education is ‘Average’ and tertiary education is ‘High’ (if both sets of grandparents had average or high education, they are labeled as ‘Ave+’ or ‘High+’). The classification of the second generation's economic assets is made with reference to the distribution among the other elite households: the ‘Small’ categories contain households that in relation to others in the economic elite are less well-endowed. Their educational level is coded in the same manner as the grandparents, although it was possible to retain an additional category – PhD – in the case of the fathers, since as many as 7.1 per cent in this economic elite also wielded the highest level of educational wealth. There are two main explanations for the missing cases in the analysis. First, for about 8 per cent of the households no information regarding the grandparents (the first generation) was possible to locate in the registers. Second, information was also lacking for a small proportion of the parents (the second generations). As far as it has been possible to assess, there is no clear pattern explaining the missing cases.

4 This classification was developed by Göran Therborn in his seminal study on the changes in the Swedish class structure 1930–1980 (Therborn 1981: 17–23). This classification is attractive, since all kinds of labour relations are potential in all sectors, causing no disturbing interaction between these two sets of variables. To the four sectors, or ‘spheres’ originally distinguished by Therborn – the productive sector (generating surplus value), the circulation sector (distributing commodities and services), the service sector (providing transportations, skills and amenities) and the reproductive sector (sustaining and creating elementary social relation – through education, health care and the legal-bureaucratic apparatus) – I have added a fifth, more ‘field-specific’ financial sector, collecting those active in the sub-sector of the circulation sector dealing with financial management and transactions.

5 Within specific MCA, the distances between the supplementary elements are considered ‘large’ when exceeding 1.0 in the space and ‘notable’ when exceeding 0.5 (Le Roux and Rouanet 2010: 46).

6 For the analysis, all investments in Swedish higher education made by these children of the economic elite between 2002 – when individuals born in 1983 normally left upper secondary school – and 2009 was recorded. The choice expressed in the figures is the course or programme where they spent the longest period during that time span.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Vetenskapsrådet [grant number 2011-5840].