The Influence of Cultural Capital on Friendship Among Students

This paper analyses the influence of cultural capital on friendship among students. Many studies have already shown a positive relationship between cultural capital and educational success. However, little attention has been given to what extent cultural capital matters for friendship formation among students in the same school class. Following Bourdieu, this paper assumes cultural capital as a bundle of codes of behavior and attitudes that lead to socially homogeneous forms of friendship. We test our hypotheses using network data from about 200 students from nine classes of secondary schools in Germany. As a result students are more likely to be friends with each other, the more similar their social origin is and the more similar their parents' homes are equipped with cultural capital.