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The Interplay between Educational Achievement, Occupational Success, and Well-Being

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Abstract

Many studies have examined the effect of life events, education, and income on well-being. Conversely, research concerning well-being as a predictor of life course outcomes is sparse. Diener’s suggestion “to inquire about the effects of well-being on future behavior and success” has, with some exceptions, not yet come to fruition. This article contributes to this body of research. We conceptualize and analyze the interplay between educational achievement, occupational success, and well-being as a complex process. The relationship between these domains is examined drawing on a structure-agency framework derived from Bourdieu and Social Comparison Theory. Social comparison between adolescents and their parents is suggested to be the mechanism explaining the effects of successful and unsuccessful intergenerational transmission of educational achievement and occupational success on well-being. It is further argued that well-being may serve as an individual resource by fostering educational and occupational outcomes. Panel data from the Transition from Education to Employment (TREE) project, a Swiss PISA 2000 follow-up study, was used. The interplay between well-being and successful and unsuccessful intergenerational transfer of educational attainment was analyzed in an autoregressive cross-lagged mixture model framework. Social comparison was found to be related to well-being, while well-being proved to significantly increase the probability of successful intergenerational transfer of educational attainment.

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Notes

  1. Dual VET refers to the most common form of VET programs in Switzerland, where students spend some days of the week at a vocational school and some day at a host company.

  2. TREE has been running since 2000 and has been funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the University of Basel, the Swiss Federal Office of Statistics, the Federal Office of Professional Education and Technology, and the cantons of Berne, Geneva, and Ticino.

  3. Higher order autocorrelation was assumed to be constant over classes. Not shown in Table 1. Average autocorrelation is 0.13 over all waves.

  4. Intercepts of positive attitude toward life differ also over time and between classes, but not significantly.

  5. In Switzerland, teenage pregnancy rates are comparably low. Births by mothers of 15 to 19 years accounted for only 1.0% of all births in Switzerland between 2001 and 2007 (20 to 24 years for 10.3%; calculations based on Federal Statistical Office data (2011)).

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Acknowledgments

This research was financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation grants 100013_130042 and 10FI13-120796. The authors would like to thank Jean Anthony Grand-Guillaume-Perrenoud for proofreading.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chair of Social Research and Methodology, Department of the Social Sciences, University of Basel, Petersgraben 27, 4051, Basel, Switzerland

    Robin Samuel & Manfred Max Bergman

  2. University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South-Africa

    Manfred Max Bergman

  3. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South-Africa

    Manfred Max Bergman

  4. Chair of Social Research and Methodology, Department of the Social Sciences, TREE—Transition from Education to Employment, University of Basel, Petersgraben 27, 4051, Basel, Switzerland

    Sandra Hupka-Brunner

Authors
  1. Robin Samuel
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  2. Manfred Max Bergman
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  3. Sandra Hupka-Brunner
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Correspondence to Robin Samuel.

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M. M. Bergman is a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Johannesburg and the Witwatersrand.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 3.

Table 3 Log Likelihood (LogL), AIC, BIC, and sample size adjusted BIC (BIC adj.) for the different models
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Appendix 2

See Table 4.

Table 4 Cross-sectional proportions of success differentials in percent (n = 5,327)
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Samuel, R., Bergman, M.M. & Hupka-Brunner, S. The Interplay between Educational Achievement, Occupational Success, and Well-Being. Soc Indic Res 111, 75–96 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-011-9984-5

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