Cultural capital theory provides a structural explanation for the persistence of educational inequalities in affluent western societies. According to Bourdieu and Passeron, upper classes manage to impose their cultural conventions as superior and more legitimate cultural expressions, which are then transmitted and valued by educational institutions, thus generating a structural advantage for upper‐class children, who enjoy a higher cultural proximity between the family and the school environment. Qualitative and quantitative research has only partially supported this explanation and has opened the way to several reformulations of the original theory.