Teenage Time Use as Investment in Cultural Capital

This article begins by briefly examining the previous literature in this area and focusing on the difficulty associated with defining and measuring cultural capital Next, the term cultural capital is examined in a wider context alongside its relationship with the other capitals defined by Bourdieu. While cultural capital is theoretically convertible into other forms of capital, the overwhelming majority of previous research focuses on its relationship with childhood school achievement. I suggest that the more attention be given to the relationship that cultural has with economic and social capital and the causal mechanisms by which it is thought to act. Next, I propose a measure in which the metaphor of investment implied in the term “capital” is recognised. The availability of time diaries from the British Cohort Study of 1970 provides an invaluable source of information regarding how British youth spent their leisure at age sixteen. Empirical analysis examines the effect of cultural capital on economic capital and social capital outcomes. This article ends with a discussion of the results, addressing some fundamental shortcomings in previous cultural capital research which have been identified by previous researchers and which this study has attempted to either address or improve upon.