Relative educational poverty: conceptual and empirical issues

This paper’s goal is to discuss implications for the empirical study of low educational status arising from the use of the concept of educational poverty in research. It has two related conceptual foci: (1) the relationship of educational poverty with material poverty and to what extent useful parallels exist, and (2) the distinction of absolute and relative (educational) poverty and whether the notion of absolute (educational) poverty is a sensible one. For the concept of educational poverty to be analytically fruitful, clear conceptualisation and operationalisation of the relevant issues are required. The paper contributes to the aim of providing these by building on existing work on educational poverty and by drawing on relevant work on material poverty as well as discussing some conceptual challenges and some of the challenges arising from the operationalisation of the concepts. Some of these challenges are illustrated using examples based on data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). In a further step, factors which may lead to a greater risk of being in relative educational poverty are analysed, employing the method multi-value Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The empirical findings highlight the relative nature of educational qualifications: the usefulness of a basic school leaving qualification has changed over time, and it has not been the same for different groups. Thus, a conceptualisation of low educational status as educational poverty has been shown to be useful, and it has been demonstrated that the relative nature of educational poverty ought to be taken into account by researchers. © 2021, The Author(s).