Parents' socioeconomic status and children's academic ... - Nova

4.1.1 Parents’ education level and children’s academic
achievements
Descriptive statistic of the parents’ education level
The source of data on parental 4 education levels is data registered at Statistics
Norway (SSB) for the year 2004. Education data for 4 per cent of the
mothers and 14 per cent of the fathers are missing. Parents’ registered
education levels are categorized into nine categories: no formal education,
primary school, lower secondary, three years of upper secondary, one to four
years at university, more than four years at university, and ‘not registered’ 5
education level. In this study, I group these levels into three categories:
1. Basic education: the aggregate of the three first categories. This category
encompasses those who completed compulsory education or
lower (0-9 years). The share with no formal education is relatively low,
1.6 per cent of the mothers and 0.7 per cent of the fathers, and has
been added to this first category
2. Secondary education: those who have completed all or part of upper
secondary education (10-12 years), and
3. Higher education: college or university education.
The share whose education is ‘not registered’ is 4 per cent for the fathers and
5 per cent for the mothers. By analyzing their job type and country of origin,
it is seen that the vast majority of these parents have unskilled jobs. 64 per
cent of those whose education is not registered are non-western immigrants,
28 per cent are western immigrants and 8 per cent are Norwegian. Such a
high percentage of immigrants in this category comes as no surprise since
immigrants may in some cases have been unable to document their education,
or the Norwegian education authority does not recognise their education
level. These factors make it difficult to figure out the education level
of this category. They are therefore added to the ‘missing category’.
4
Both biological- and step-parents.
5
‘Not registered’, here, means not registered at SSB, while ‘missing’ means missing
due to technical problems.
– Parents’ socioeconomic status and children’s academic performance – 27