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 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
This seems restricted to a specific foreign country, therefore is it really useful to anyone other than those in that particular country?
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.
If you looked at adopted children, denomination would be about the same, while SES would be 0.