In his seminal work, Pierre Bourdieu (1973, 1986) distinguished three fundamental forms of capital that, in his view, allow for a more complete and nuanced understanding of social reproduction and the societal distribution of power. According to his conceptualization, economic capital refers to economic resources (e.g., income, property). Social capital refers to resources available through social ties and membership in social networks. Cultural capital comprises “instruments for the appropriation of symbolic wealth worthy of being sought and possessed” (Bourdieu, 1973, p. 175). Regarding the conversion of the three forms of capital, Bourdieu (1986) posited that social and cultural capital can be construed from economic capital to a certain degree but only with much effort. This implies on the one hand that economic capital is fundamental to the other capital forms and on the other hand that social and cultural capital cannot be reduced to economic resources (Bourdieu, 1986).

In his later work, Bourdieu distinguished between three more specific forms of cultural capital: incorporated, institutionalized, and objectified cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1979). Incorporated cultural capital is understood as an individual’s inherent and lasting disposition influenced by processes of formal education and individual socialization. Institutionalized cultural capital grants institutional or public recognition mostly represented by academic titles. It is, under the right circumstances, convertible into economic capital (Koller, 2009). Finally, objectified cultural capital comprises tangible cultural goods such as books or works of art that can, in contrast to incorporated cultural capital, be physically transferred. It is the latter form of cultural capital that the widespread “number of books in the household” items capture.

Initially, Bourdieu introduced the concept of cultural capital in an attempt to explain how social status is reproduced through a society’s educational system (Bourdieu, 1973, 1984, 1986; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990; Lareau & Weininger, 2005). He accorded a pivotal role to the intergenerational transmission of cultural capital, by which children are endowed with parental cultural capital during the process of socialization. Bourdieu and Passeron (1990) argued that children profit the most from parental cultural capital when their parents are of a high social status, that is, if parents have accumulated greater amounts of cultural capital. Those children are better prepared for higher levels of education and receive greater rewards during their educational career (e.g., in form of better school grades). This recreation of social privilege is known as the Cultural Reproduction Theory. In contrast to Bourdieu’s ideas, DiMaggio (1982) found that male students benefit the most from their parental cultural capital if their fathers had a low to medium socioeconomic status. He concluded that children whose parents are of a lower socioeconomic standing are better able to use their parental cultural resources as an additional asset to their measured ability on their way to higher education. He names this the Cultural Mobility Theory (DiMaggio, 1982).

Today’s predominant interpretation and operationalization of cultural capital can be traced back to the work of DiMaggio (for reviews, see Kingston, 2001; Lareau & Weininger, 2005). He filled in Bourdieu’s sometimes unclear and inconsistent explanations of how incorporated cultural capital is associated with individual educational outcomes (Lamont & Lareau, 1988; Kingston, 2001; Sullivan, 2001; Lareau & Weininger, 2005) by arguing that “schools reward students on the basis of their cultural capital […]. Teachers […] communicate more easily with students who participate in elite status cultures, give them more attention and special assistance, and perceive them as more intelligent or gifted than students who lack cultural capital” (DiMaggio, 1982, p. 190). Thus, DiMaggio specified a mechanism through which cultural capital can contribute to individual educational outcomes. Consequently, DiMaggio’s cultural capital follows a Weberian notion of “elite status groups”, according to which specific traits, tastes, and styles within a social group generate “a common sense of honor based upon and reinforced by shared conventions” (DiMaggio, 1982, p. 189). He operationalized cultural capital as participation in cultural activities that represent a high social status such as visiting the museum and theater or enjoying classical music (cf. Kingston, 2001; Lamont & Lareau, 1988; Lareau & Weininger, 2005).

Despite the elaborate theoretical underpinnings of the cultural capital concept, little effort has been devoted to the question as to how cultural capital should best be measured (Kingston, 2001; Dumais, 2006). Although Bourdieu suggested a range of indicators of cultural capital that he used in his empirical work (Bourdieu, 1973), there are no established “gold standard” indicators of cultural capital (Kingston, 2001; Dumais, 2006). Research has used widely varying measures, often chosen ad hoc, and the validity of even the most widely used indicators is largely unclear.

Teachman (1987) was one of the first to use measures of objective parental cultural resources that foster academic success and which are not bound to family demographics (see also Leibowitz, 1977). In his study, he focused on educational resources measured through four items asking if, in the respondents’ home, there were a place to study, a daily newspaper, a dictionary, or an encyclopedia and if there were reference books (Teachman, 1987, p. 550).

Subsequently, an item asking respondents how many books there were in their family's home when they were 16 years old has emerged as one of the most widely used operationalizations of objectified family cultural capital. This single-item measure has been used, for example, in large-scale international comparisons conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; e.g., OECD, 2011). Apart from its face validity, however, the quality of this measurement approach has rarely been systematically scrutinized.

The aim of our present analyses is to fill this gap. Specifically, we analyze the measurement properties (e.g., objectivity, reliability, and especially validity) of the aforementioned item measuring past cultural capital through the number of books in the respondent family's home at age 16. Moreover, we analyze a slightly rephrased variant of this item that measures present cultural capital through the number of books in the respondent's current household. For his purpose, we draw on a large sample of German adults.