Inequality of Educational Opportunities and Social Mobility

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_108How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Educational Inequality; Social Mobility; Class Solidification; Higher Education

Abstract

Education is one of the important tools for promoting social mobility. Since the implementation of the expansion policy for universities in our country, whether education could bring about social mobility and promote social equity has become the focus of attention of scholars both domestically and abroad. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the problem caused by educational inequality leading to class solidification by re-viewing relevant domestic and international research, based on the MMI theory and EMI theory. The differences between family capital cause the students in advantaged families could gain the high-quality educational resources easier and form quality-based inequality; there are differences in the education models and content between urban and rural areas, making it difficult for rural children to enter top universities, thus they remain at a disadvantage in the labor market; students in the developed eastern regions with rich educational resources could use the religion advantages to enter a higher-level university successfully, however, children in the central and western regions find it difficult to overcome regional educational barriers, ultimately solidifying inequality; advantaged class families have “a tendency for genderization” when they transmit cultural capital, the “gender cultural capital” constraints on the quality of children's education and career development reinforce the gender dimension of class solidification.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yewei Yang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/02/26
TI  - Inequality of Educational Opportunities and Social Mobility
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 5th International Conference on Culture, Design and Social Development (CDSD 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 971
EP  - 977
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_108
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_108
ID  - Yang2026
ER  -