Cumulative Inequality and Attitude Formation: How Education Affects Liberal Attitudes Across the Life Course

Abstract

This study examines how individuals develop distinct attitude patterns over the life course, with a particular focus on the role of educational attainment in shaping trajectories. It differentiates the effects of aging stemming from critical life events from age group differences resulting from observing different people at various life stages (i.e., compositional effects). I formulate propositions on how chronological and social aging affect attitudes, and on how compositional effects may distort findings. To test these propositions, I use extensive multi-cohort panel data from the German Socioeconomic Panel Study (SOEP), employing immigration-related concerns as the primary attitude measure, with additional analyses involving alternative attitude measures and data from the European Social Survey (ESS). The findings suggest that labor market entry, unemployment, marriage, and first-time parenthood have a greater impact on people with lower levels of education, leading to growing education-specific differences as individuals progress through early adulthood. By contrast, attitudes tend to converge among different educational groups in old age, a phenomenon attributable to generational influences rather than the impact of aging itself. These results offer crucial insights into attitude formation processes, the liberalizing impact of education, and the utilization of multi-cohort panel data for assessing the heterogeneous effects of aging.