The Correlation between Cultural Capital and Educational Attainment: After the "Double Reduction" Policy

Abstract

Educational equity serves as a vital safeguard for the equitable distribution of societal resources. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, our nation has achieved remarkable progress in advancing education, from eradicating illiteracy to cultivating talent across diverse fields. However, the development of educational equity has been pursued through phased exploration and implementation. This paper examines the evolution of educational equity within China's education system over the past seven decades since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, reflecting on the factors contributing to educational inequality. Employing Bourdieu's theory of cultural reproduction, the study systematically reviews and analyses key policy documents, significant historical events, and relevant research literature through the examination of policy texts and historical records of education system development. Findings reveal that while progress has been made in technical equity, the education system remains deficient in safeguarding social equity when confronted with disparities in cultural capital held by successive generations arising from social stratification. The conclusion posits that to advance the social equity dimension of educational equity, the education system should implement differentiated examination difficulty standards for families possessing varying levels of cultural capital. Furthermore, channels for converting economic capital into cultural capital should be reduced and narrowed to mitigate the structural issues stemming from cultural capital.