From Additive Effects to Household Configurations: Reinterpreting Parental Influence in Intergenerational Occupational Transmission

Research on intergenerational occupational transmission typically models parental influences as additive and independent, treating maternal and paternal occupations as separable inputs. This study shows that such additive models are algebraically equivalent to configurational specifications that represent parental occupations as joint household configurations. Despite this equivalence, the two approaches are not interpretively equivalent. Drawing on Bourdieu and Passeron’s concept of the household as an “ensemble,” the study advances a configurational perspective in which dual-parent exposure serves as a baseline of joint occupational presence, and mother-only and father-only configurations are deviations from this baseline. Using data from students in 79 countries, the analysis examines occupational alignment in Health and Technical STEM fields. While both specifications yield identical fitted values, the configurational interpretation reveals systematic asymmetries across household configurations that are not directly visible in additive parameterisations. Differences commonly read as parental effects can be re-expressed as contrasts corresponding to the absence of the other parent relative to the dual-parent baseline, varying by gender and field. More broadly, the findings highlight how statistically equivalent models can support substantively different interpretations when the underlying comparison between household configurations is made explicit.