Abstract:

Vocational education is an education type that has the same important status as general education, but its effects in promoting social mobility are different. Using the data of the China Family Panel Survey (CFPS), based on the classical theoretical perspective of educational sociology, this paper investigated the impact of vocational education on intergenerational occupational mobility under the dual-track path of general vocational education. It is found that receiving secondary vocational education can promote individual intergenerational upward mobility, and effectively prevent the downward flow of intergenerational occupations, especially for vulnerable groups; due to the endogenous educational disadvantages and exogenous structural disadvantages in higher vocational education, compared with ordinary undergraduate education, receiving higher vocational education can neither promote the upward mobility of individual intergenerational careers nor prevent the downward mobility of intergenerational careers;and general vocational integrated education and general high school general education can promote the upward mobility of intergenerational occupations better than secondary and higher vocational education.

Key words: intergenerational occupational mobility, vocational education, educational equality, multivariate logistic model