I was curious about a few social variables which often associate across generations, and also within families. So I looked in the General Social Survey for denomination, highest degree and socioeconomic index, which I knew were surveyed for the individual (respondent), their parents and their spouse. Below the fold are the correlation matrices generated. Remember that if you assume a linear dependency you square the correlation (e.g., 0.50 → 0.25) to find out how much of the variation in X can be accounted for by variation in Y.
| Religious denomination | Denomination | Father's Denom. | Mother's Denom. | Denom. Raised | Spouse Denom. | Spouse Denom. Raised |
| Denomination | - | 0.63 | 0.59 | 0.68 | 0.80 | 0.48 |
| Father's Denom. | - | - | 0.84 | 0.89 | 0.47 | 0.40 |
| Mother's Denom. | - | - | - | 0.87 | 0.41 | 0.39 |
| Denom. Raised | - | - | - | - | 0.48 | 0.42 |
| Spouse Denom. | - | - | - | - | 0.67 | |
| Spouse Denom. Raised | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Highest level of education | Degree | Father's Degree | Mother's Degree | Spouse Degree |
| Degree | - | 0.43 | 0.41 | 0.57 |
| Father's Degree | - | - | 0.57 | 0.37 |
| Mother's Degree | - | - | - | 0.35 |
| Spouse Degree | - | - | - | - |
| Socioeconomic index | SEI | Father's SEI | Mother's SEI | Spouse SEI |
| SEI | - | 0.26 | 0.23 | 0.33 |
| Father's SEI | - | - | 0.38 | 0.22 |
| Mother's SEI | - | - | - | 0.20 |
| Spouse SEI | - | - | - | - |
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
This seems restricted to a specific foreign country, therefore is it really useful to anyone other than those in that particular country?
Posted by: Ian Tindale | July 30, 2008 2:37 AM
This is very interesting indeed - and the opposite to what most people would predict - because people 'choose' (or at least they *think* they choose) their denomination but not their SES.
Posted by: bgc | July 30, 2008 5:25 AM
If you looked at adopted children, denomination would be about the same, while SES would be 0.
Posted by: Jason Malloy | July 30, 2008 1:28 PM