Class and Gender Inequality in Educational Outcomes in Egypt

The rich literature on inequality in educational access in the Global North has yet to fully reach the Global South, limiting social demographers’ understanding of processes of social stratification in many world regions. In this paper, I apply the educational transitions model developed by Mare to the issue of class background and educational attainment in Egypt. The aim of the paper is to assess change in the importance of class background as a determinant of educational attainment against the background of the rapid increase in education that has occurred in Egypt at the population level. The results indicate that the magnitude of the association between parental education and educational attainment has declined significantly for cohorts born since the 1950s, largely due to an increase in primary school completion rates. However, both mother’s and father’s education remain significant predictors of educational attainment through advanced stages of the educational system. Furthermore, higher parental education is positively associated with placement into the more prestigious general academic track at the secondary level, and negatively associated with tracking into vocational education. The latter result holds even when measures of school quality are incorporated into the analysis.