- [Voiceover] There remains a huge amount of
social inequality between rich families
and poor families.
One of the things that we know is
that this large social inequality
between the rich and families with much more resources,
and the poor elements of society
seems to replicate itself across generations.
So if we label this first group, "Generation one,"
and the second group, "Generation two,"
a large group of people who have rich parents
tend to end up pretty wealthy themselves.
And people who had poorer parents tend to end up poor.
This is actually a process
that's called "Social Reproduction."
And what social reproduction means is that
we are reproducing the social inequality across generations.
There must be reasons to help explain what's happening.
One of the things that we see that wealthy families have
is all these dollars here.
They have a lot of what's called "Financial Capital."
The useful thing about financial capital,
and capital suggests that when someone has it
they can invest in something and get some returns,
The good thing about financial capital is
you can invest it into other things.
You can invest it and obtain what's called "Social Capital."
And essentially what social capital means is building up
reliable, useful social networks,
networks of trustworthy, useful connections.
>From those connections you can really
obtain opportunities and advantages in society.
The other thing that financial capital can expose you to
is something called "Cultural Capital."
What cultural capital is talking about
is a few different things.
So, for example, if your parents are
regularly exposing you to trips abroad
and you may be learning foreign languages, such as French.
They may be taking you to movies, to the theater.
You could have a fine appreciation
of classical music, for example.
You may know all the social nuances
of the local golf club, know how to play polo,
know how to do the things that many middle-class
and upper-class children know how to do,
and have those experiences.
You may also have cultural items within your house,
such as paintings, portraits and other cultural artifacts,
and you may know a lot about them.
Your parents will clue you in.
And both those things, social capital
and cultural capital, they're capital.
So with this understanding you may gain some rewards.
Part of that reward is that these two processes,
these two capitals, can actually
turbo-charge this social reproduction.
But, hold on a second.
Even if someone is really poor,
won't they have social capital?
They will certainly have social networks,
and they will certainly have culture,
and cultural experiences.
But I'm gonna bring something else into this mix.
I'm gonna bring something that you would think
would help to break all of this up.
I'm gonna bring our educational system in.
Because one of the things you can say to me
is that, hold on, doesn't our educational system
give the poor a chance to break out of poverty
and the rich, they presumably get
a good education anyway, right?
Doesn't it give a chance to kind of shake up the system,
put everyone on an equal footing?
Think about this.
Does our educational system value the culture
of people from the lower classes as much as
the culture of the people who have got much more resources,
may come from the higher classes or more privileged classes?
For an example of this will be graffiti.
If a child knows all about the graffiti
in their local neighborhood, I'm not too sure
our educational system would care
as much about that as it would fine art.
What we may find is that educational system
really doesn't value the culture and the social networks
of the poorer population,
or the less advantaged population.
But what it does is really values
the cultural capital and social capital
of the more wealthy people.
So, in fact, our educational system can be reinforcing
this social stratification that we see here.
The children of rich parents are more likely
to be wealthy themselves, and the children
of poorer parents are more likely to be,
to stay poor, compared to their richer peers.
So actually our educational system
may be reinforcing social reproduction.
Now obviously, a lot of this may be controversial
and people may argue against it.
And there are a lot of different variations
and other, and aspects to consider.
But this is just a brief overview of social reproduction.