Empirical educational research has shown that social inequalities influence the student´s educational achievement. Different theoretical frameworks, such as Bourdieu's capital theory refer to how different types of capital can be related to achievement. For several countries, the correlation of socio-economic status and student´s educational achievement has been shown (Wendt et al., 2012). About 23% of people in Kosovo live in poverty and the GDP is a quarter of the European average (UNICEF, 2021), which indicates a high level of social inequalities. The fact that post-conflict countries, such as Kosovo, have less beneficial conditions and are therefore also associated with lower levels of educational achievement is e.g. shown by the results of the TIMSS study (Mullis et al., 2020). However, analyses show that social inequality in Kosovo is quite small (Wendt et al., i.p.). Moreover, this raises the question of whether the operationalization of socio-economic status in post-conflict countries can take place in the same way than in other countries and whether constructs developed in one culture are valid for other cultures (Matsumoto, 2003). In this article we therefore analyze the operationalization of the socio-economic status indicators. As a theoretical framework we used Bourdieu´s theory (2003, 2012) of capital. Therefore, we conducted secondary analysis of the TIMSS 2019 data of Kosovo at grade 4 to analyze the extent of differences in mathematics and science performance that can be explained by Bourdieu's theory of capital. We use data from the household survey and the student questionnaire, self-reported by parents and students (nstudents= 4496; mean age 9.9). We conducted multivariate regression analysis using the IEA IDB Analyzer. We found a significant relationship for parental education level and number of books for both math and science The lack of economic resources at home is negatively related to mathematics and science achievement. However, the largest difference in achievement is found among children who come to school hungry, with a difference of 31.5 points in science. The "effect" of language practices on science achievement remains significant when controlling for cultural and economic resources. This can be seen as a first indication that the cultural capital acquired by parents through conflict-related migration makes an independent explanatory contribution to the differences in their children's performance. The overall variability in student performance that this model can explain is limited, explaining only about 13% of the variation in student performance, indicating that other important factors may not be accounted for.

Boudon, R. (1974). Education, Opportunity, and Social Inequality. Changing Prospects in Western Society. Wiley. Bourdieu, P. (2003). Interventionen, 1961-2001: Sozialwissenschaft und politisches Handeln. Raisons d'agir. VSA-Verlag. Bourdieu, P. (2012). Ökonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital. In U. Bauer, U. H. Bittlingmayer, & A. Scherr (Eds.), Handbuch Bildungs- und Erziehungssoziologie (pp. 229–242). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-18944-4_15 Matsumoto, D. (2003). Cross‐cultural Research. In S. F. Davis (Ed.), Handbook of Research Methods in Experimental Psychology (pp. 189–208). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470756973.ch9 UNICEF. (2021). Annual Report. https://www.unicef.org/kosovoprogramme/media/2931/file/English-2022.pdf Wendt, H., Stubbe, T., & Schwippert, K. (2012). Soziale Herkunft und Lesekompetenzen von Schülerinnen und Schülern. In W. Bos, I. Tarelli, A. Bremerich-Vos, & K. Schwippert (Eds.), IGLU 2011Lesekompetenzen von Grundschulkindern in Deutschland im internationalen Vergleich (pp. 175–190). Waxmann Verlag.