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In this article, the authors assess why educational attainment is associated with many diverse social outcomes. Their multivariate models incorporate linear (years of schooling) and nonlinear (credentials) measures of schooling, socioeconomic status (origin and destination), and cognitive ability. The outcome variables include attitudes toward civil liberties and gender equality, social and cultural capital, and civic knowledge. The results indicate only modest evidence of "credential effects." The mediating impacts of both cognitive ability and socioeconomic status (original and destination) are often substantial but even together do not account for all apparent "educational effects."
Education is a great independent variable. The more educated are healthier; wealthier; and, in some ways, wiser-not to mention more participative in political and civic life, more cosmopolitan, more content, more supportive of civil liberties, and less inclined to traditional religious views.1 Indeed, almost as a reflex, researchers include educational attainment as one of the normal "suspects" in multivariate analyses of almost any outcome of sociological interest. The common result is a significant increase in R^sup 2^ or its cognates and a decrease in the apparent "net effects" of other variables.
What is less evident is why the more educated earn more and, inter alia, vote more, have more varied musical tastes, have more friends, and are more tolerant of homosexuals. In the empirical research on social and political outcomes, the "educational effect" is generally either untheorized or only implicitly theorized. And for its part, the limited theoretical discussion of why education is so socially consequential has not been systematically connected to relevant research.
Our purpose is to begin to unravel the reasons why educational attainment is associated with many diverse social outcomes.2 We draw on the extensive literature on the connection between schooling and earnings, specifically human capital and credentialing theories, and consider their applicability to noneconomic outcomes. Relatedly, we assess the impact of cognitive ability in mediating the connection between schooling and various outcomes. We further consider the implications of the fact that educational attainment is connected to both family origins and economic destinations. To what extent does education have apparent social consequences because it certifies or is, at least, linked to particular economic backgrounds? To what extent do educational effects reflect the allocative role of schooling in the labor...