How useful are microclasses? An analysis of detailed parental occupational differences and their effects on filial school attainment in Britain

It is often argued that detailed differences between occupational positions have important empirical effects upon socio-economic outcomes (e.g. Weeden and Grusky, 2005). In this paper we investigate the extent to which fine-grained measures of parental occupational positions, as are available in a major longitudinal UK social survey (Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales), add value to an analysis of children’s educational attainment.